


Thor Odinson is Not Just A God of Thunder

by Valeris



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Darcy Lewis-centric, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fertility god Thor, Followed By Real Dating, Jane Foster & Darcy Lewis Friendship, Multi, Thor Is Not Stupid, Virgin Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 15:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 34,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3855538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valeris/pseuds/Valeris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of Thor's lesser known functions is as a god of fertility, and he certainly knows a maiden when he sees one.  (Or, how Thor outs Darcy as a virgin and maybe gets her a date in the process.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dolphindreamer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolphindreamer/gifts).



> Based on a prompt by dolphindreamer, although I didn't stick to the pairing you wanted (oops).

It’s a Waitresses song that outs her.

Bruce is trying to synthesize some kind of lotion while the rest of the team sits around the lab complaining about the sticky gold paste coating their skin.  Natasha and Steve had their backs against the wall, but the others weren’t even trying to give Darcy and Jane their space-- Clint had sprawled out on the floor like a starfish, and Tony wouldn’t stop pacing a line of tacky yellow footprints across the white floor.   

They’d be in her way under the best circumstances, but whatever it was that they’d been affected by had done nothing to Thor, and he was distracting Jane from her sciencing as only Thor could.  Darcy wished she could get her attention when it was time to eat that easily, but forcing a granola bar down Jane’s throat wasn’t an ‘Avengers Assemble’ level of emergency.

Because Jane isn’t doing anything more useful than scribbling unintelligibly on a piece of paper while she makes heart eyes, Darcy pulls out a stack of notes and begins to transcribe them with a feeling of deep resentment.  Dealing with Jane’s hieroglyphics is something that Darcy avoids whenever possible, but at this point it’s Jane’s notes or the dishes in the lab sink-- and as those belonged to Dr. Banner, there was at least a 50/50 chance that they would do something weird to her if she touched them.

Darcy put her iPod on shuffle and started typing.  As soon as she began to mouth the lyrics to ‘I Know What Boys Like’, Tony waggled his eyebrows.

“Oh,  _do_ you, Lewis?”  He said, his tone so arch and suggestive that Clirt smirked.

Darcy looked up from the letter she was trying to decipher (it was either a ‘g’ or an ‘e’).  “What?”

“Do you know what boys like, or is this just musical false advertising?”  He gestured grandly.  “Regale me with tales of your many spurned lovers.”

“I have nothing to regale you with.”  She told him, turning the paper in front of her face in the hope that a different angle would make this scribble look like a word.

“Lewis, I’m bored, and I’m sticky, and I’m not allowed to touch anything.”  Tony complained, pointing to the rest of the team with one thumb.  “And I’ve already heard every anecdote these people have.  Twice.  I need something new.  Tell me a story about your romantic exploits.”

“Should I tuck you in afterwards too?”  Darcy asked, rolling her eyes.  “No.”

“Cruelty.”  Tony accused, “Here I am, feeding you, employing you, allowing you to do science under my roof, and yet you deny me such a simple pleasure… You’re a dark spirit, Lewis.”

“Tis not cruelty, Man of Iron. You request a favor the maiden cannot grant.”  Thor interrupted,  “As she has not yet bestowed her favor upon any man.”

Darcy stared at him.  “I never told you that.”  She said, wondering if it was that obvious.  It wasn’t something she was exactly ashamed of, but she  _was_ 25\.  Definately approaching an age when it was weird and embarrassing to be a virgin.

“Mastery of thunder is but one of the ways in which my power manifests.”  Thor informed her, smiling.  “Fertility is also my domain.”

“So, what, I just look not-fertile?”  Darcy asked, frowning.  “I have a virgin smell?  What?”

Thor merely shrugged, as if the explanation would be too complex to be useful.

She didn’t miss Steve’s suddenly blank and uncomfortable face.   _Great, now we're talking about my lack of sex life in front of Captain America,_ Darcy thought, but she didn't mean it.  Steve was a good guy, and nowhere near as uptight as people thought he was.  She would have rather not had him hear about it, but that wasn't because she thought he was judging her.  

Tony glanced between Darcy and Thor with an expression that suggested he thought he was being punked.  “I refuse to believe that.”  Tony decided,  “I mean, Darcy’s so…”  He made a gesture Darcy’d had directed her way more than a few times, drawing a curvy woman in the air with his hands.

Jane was equally puzzled. “No, that can’t be right.  I thought you said-- I mean, you definitely have--With that chemist?”

“Jane, once a guy starts telling everyone you’ve slept with him, there’s no point in denying it.”  Darcy said dismissively.  She'd learned that lesson the hard way in middle school.  By the time high school had come around she’d developed an undeserved reputation-- but she’d also taught more than a few boys that the rumor mill was a double-edged sword.

“Aye, Heimdall spoke to me in the time that I was absent of the man and his false claims that in exchange for sharing your bed he bestowed upon you a superior evaluation.”  Thor agreed, frowning, “Although we found your solution cause for much mirth.”

He leaned towards Tony conspiratorially, as if to share a private joke, but his voice carried to the entire room.  “Although Darcy had received superior marks through her own merit alone, she agreed with his spurious assertions.  Then made additions of her own that were such that, for the rest of his tenure, the foul liar found nary a female willing to be his companion.  A most fitting retribution.”

He raised his voice, to address Darcy.  “I had not spoken of it before, in deference to a maiden’s privacy, but I could not hold my peace while the Man of Iron maligned your character, innocent and jesting though his mistake was.”

“Well, thanks for defending my honor or whatever, I guess.  I would have kind of rather you, you know, hadn’t, but,”  She patted his arm to show there were no hard feelings, “You meant well.”

Thor’s brow furrowed.  “You would prefer that others misconstrue your true nature?”

“Yeah, most of the time.”  Darcy admitted.  “My ‘nature’ is not generally popular.”

“Darcy, are you saying you really did get the highest score in your chemistry class?”  Jane asked, and Darcy could see the genuine hurt under her confusion.  “Why did you change your major?  You said you switched because it was too hard.”

“It was too hard.  Just not academically.”  Darcy said, not wanting to go into the details with Jane.  She was an attractive woman trying to make it in a science field.  Maybe Jane had managed to miss some of what went on by being so absorbed in her work that she didn’t notice the rampant sexism, but she’d still had an uphill battle, and she hadn’t quit.  When the going got tough for Darcy, she’d found a different course of study instead.  Sometimes it felt like her whole life was an uphill battle-- sometimes she just wanted  _something_  to be easy.

Thor was nodding with understanding, though.  “Yes, I heard also of your advisor, and his dishonorable behavior.  It was fortunate that you were once again in possession of your portable lightning.”

“Profession  _Ludwig_?”  Jane asked, making a disgusted face.  “He’s at least fifty.  Is that why he had to have his pacemaker replaced?”

Darcy grinned, and Jane's eyes narrowed.  She had the feeling a few people at their alma mater were about to get some strongly worded phone calls.

“Hey, fifty’s not old.”  Tony protested, but without much weight behind it.  “So, wait-- Lewis, are you like, an actual science minion?  I always assumed you were more of a babysitter.  You know, keeping Foster fed and watered.”

“While she is most attentive to my love’s well being, you would be remiss to believe that Darcy does not also contribute to the important work conducted in this laboratory.”  Thor rested one hand on Darcy’s shoulder to squeeze it.  “As ever, she is too modest to speak of her contributions, but rest assured that they are numerous.”

“Hmm,”  Tony said, eyeing Darcy in a way that did not bode well for her workload in the future,  “Okay, tabling that for now.  So, the virgin thing-- is that what you’re going for?”

Darcy shrugged uncomfortably.  “I don’t know.  I’ve tried dating, but it’s like they’ve all already come up with this idea of who they think I am before I even get there.”

Tony frowned-- not as if he didn’t understand, as if he did and didn’t like it.  “So, is that the only issue?  You waiting for anything else?”

“The right guy, I guess.”  Darcy smiled, a little embarrassed at the cliche.

“I did not know you desired romantic companionship!”  Thor looked delighted.  “I have often thought of men who might be fit to court you.  You have but to express your wishes, and I shall find you one suitable.”

Natasha perked up to give Darcy a very thorough assessment.   “Steve, you should ask her out.”  She said decisively, once her perusal was over.

“I-- What?”  Steve asked, then glanced at Darcy and turned red.

“No, I’m kind of liking it.”  Tony interjected, sizing Darcy up in the same way Natasha had.  “Not a cape chaser, or a groupie, but also not weirded out by it…”

“A ‘cape chaser’?”  Steve said, giving Tony a stern look.  “Tony, that’s-- you made that up, no one calls anyone that.”

“People totally call them that.”  Clint disagreed, still laying on the floor.  He had started applying his sticky hand to the counter closest to him to make what was both a huge mess and a reasonably good drawing of a dog.  It looked like a golden retriever.

“The Captain would be a fine companion, but there are many who might seek your favor.”  Thor told her seriously.

“Oh, competition.”  Tony elbowed Steve and promptly got his arm stuck to the man’s abdomen.  “You competitive, Capsicle?”

“Not really,”  Steve muttered, but if the look on his face was anything to judge by, he was lying.


	2. Chapter 2

Darcy got home from her third date of the week and crawled directly into her pajamas.

When Jane came home and saw her curled up under the covers she sighed. “No good?”

“Jane, make him stop.”  Darcy begged without moving.  “I hate this.  I’m sorry I ever said I wanted a boyfriend.  Tell Thor I want to be sacrificed to a volcano or something instead.”

Jane sat down on the edge of Darcy’s bed, biting her lower lip.  “He’s really invested in this.”  She admitted, and patted Darcy’s leg through her blanket.  “I don’t know if he’s going to quit trying…”

“Jane, seriously,”  Darcy pulled the covers down so she could look her friend in the eye,  “I can’t do this.  I like men, but… I think I like the concept of a man, more than like, an actual man.”  She extended her arm with her palm flat.  “I like men that are at least this far away from me at all times.”

Jane frowned.  “What about the whole Ian thing?  Or Thor, I mean… Not that it bothers me, but I’ve seen you check him out.”

“Of course I check Thor out, Thor’s a mirage.  He’s over there somewhere,”  She waved arbitrarily,  “Like a distant object.  Not to mention he’s all about you.  He’s completely safe.  And the Ian thing… I don’t know.  I wanted to try it, I guess.”  She shrugged.  “Wasn’t for me.”

“I’ll talk to him.”  Jane promised, and gave Darcy’s leg a reassuring rub.  Considering that was what Jane had said last time, Darcy wasn’t holding on to much hope.

 

Steve wasn’t sure if he was nervous around Darcy now because everyone was trying to set him up with her, or if he actually liked her.

Maybe it was that they shared the same secret, even if she didn’t know it.  Tony drawing Darcy’s shape in the air with his hands with that incredulous look on his face had pretty much summed up Steve’s reaction.  That was the problem-- that thing she’d said about people having already decided who she was before she got there was something he was guilty of, and it didn’t sit well with him.

Everyone he met these days had this vision of who ‘Captain America’ would be.  Steve couldn’t really blame them.  In the years he’d been in the ice there had been decades of Captain America comic books, cartoons, serialized novels.  That was the guy they were expecting to meet.

He didn’t know how many times he’d had someone tell him they’d expected him to be bigger.

And here he was, doing the same thing to someone else.  

There wasn't any way to apologize for that that wouldn’t sound weird.

When Steve walked into the kitchen and saw Darcy staring out the window, he hesitated.  She was still in her pajamas, holding a cup of coffee close to her chest like she was cold, and there was something about her body language that said she didn’t want to talk.

“Hey Darcy,”  Steve said, deciding it would be bad manners not to say anything to her at all.  He felt reassured when she smiled at him, although he hadn’t expected anything else-- Darcy had always been friendly with him.

“Hey Steve.”  She said, turning away from the window,  “You’re up early.”

“Actually, I’m always up early.”  He admitted, grabbing an apple so that he’d have something to do with his hands.  “I don’t usually see you this time of day.  Meeting?”

“No.  Couldn’t sleep.”  She admitted, making a sour face down at her mug.  “I’m kind of stressed out.”

“What about?”  Steve asked, taking a seat across the table.  She did look tired-- there were dark shadows under her eyes.  

“Ugh, the whole-- Thor thing, you know,”  She said, looking aside like she was embarrassed,  “He keeps wanting to set me up on dates.  It’s been kind of awful.”

“Did someone--?”  Steve wasn’t sure how to phrase his question, but he remembered what she’d told Jane and Thor about her academic advisor.    

Thankfully she shook her head.  “No, they’ve all been nice guys, I guess.  I just wish he would stop, you know?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”  Steve said, making a face of his own.  Natasha had been relentless lately.  He should ask out Darcy.  He should ask out Shirley in accounting.  Had he talked to Sharon yet?  No matter how many times he said no, it didn’t seem to deter her.  “Natasha’s the same way.”

Darcy sighed.  “I just… I don’t know, it sounds weird, but I hate getting dressed for someone else.  It’s exhausting.”  She went back to looking out the window.  It didn’t feel like she was talking to him anymore.  “I’m used to just doing stuff because I like it.  Once you start dating someone, suddenly it’s like ‘Oh, I don’t like girls who swear all the time’ or ‘I’m not really into red lipstick’, and then you have this whole other set of weird standards to think about… I don’t know, I’m rambling.  I just don’t want it.”

Steve tossed the piece of fruit in between his hands, really looking at her face.  It was more than just tired.  “I don’t think you should do anything that makes you sad like that.”  He said, wondering what the hell those guys could have said to make her feel like she wasn’t good enough.

“Yeah, well, tell that to Thor.”  Darcy said, quirking a smile.

“I can.  If you want me to.”  Steve offered, and even though he’d been trying to avoid Thor ever since he found out about his other abilities, he meant it.

“No…”  She sat up straighter.  “Maybe you can give me some tips though.  I mean, you have  _Natasha_  after you, and I don’t see anyone making you go bowling with Jake from the IT department.  How do you get out of it?”

“Mostly I run away.”  Steve admitted.  “Once I jumped out of a plane.”

“...Wow.”  Darcy raised her eyebrows, “That is... probably not an option for me.”

Steve grinned.  “Hey, you asked.”

“If I have to go on another date I might consider it.”  Darcy said, and there it was again-- that sad face.

“You know,”  Steve said, the beginnings of a plan starting to take shape in his head,  “Maybe we could solve each other’s problem.”

“How so?”  Darcy asked, giving him a sideways glance.  

Steve shrugged and bit into his apple.  “Let’s date.”

“That might work for you, but Thor’s going to know that we haven’t… you know.”  Darcy objected, but she didn’t seem entirely resistant to the idea.

“I’m Catholic.”  Steve pointed out,  “And I’m from the 40’s.  I hear they hadn’t invented sex yet, back then.”

“So the story would be ‘We’re taking it glacially slow because Steve’s sexually repressed’?”  Darcy looked skeptical, but all Steve could focus on was the fact that she’d called him ‘Steve’ instead of Captain America.  “Won’t that mess up your manly street cred or whatever?”

“Trust me, I have enough ‘street cred’.”  Steve told her, thinking of all the people who had come out of the woodwork claiming they were his grandkids.  “I could use a little less.”

Darcy bit her lip, thinking it over.  “Okay.  I mean, it’s worth a try, right?  We can always ‘break up’ if it gets too embarrassing for you.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”  Steve assured her, already feeling some of the pressure of Natasha’s constant haranguing lift from his shoulders.  “So, I guess we should go on a date or something.”

“Wanna just watch a movie?”  Darcy suggested.  “Tony has a whole theater setup in one of the common rooms.  We do that once a week, and bam, we’re casually dating.”

“I’ve got a list of things people tell me I need to watch.”  Steve reached into his back pocket to pull out his notebook.  Darcy flipped through it thoughtfully, raising her eyebrows occasionally in surprise.

“Okay, I can work with this.”  She promised, handing him back his list.  “Tomorrow?”

“Sure.  7 o’clock?”  Steve suggested.  When Darcy shrugged her acceptance he got to his feet.  “Well.  I’ll go tell our friends the good news, shall I?”

“Please, be my guest.”  Darcy said, shooing him towards the door.  “The sooner the better.”

 

Natasha had taken the news with a smile and a curious tilt of her head, as if she didn’t quite believe him, but Thor was another matter.

He beamed and clapped Steve on the back so hard he almost stumbled.  “I am most pleased!  I have endeavored to find Darcy a suitable companion, but I must admit I have found it more challenging than anticipated.  Despite their apparent fitness in both character and physical strength, none of my suggested suitors have found favor.”  He attempted to lower his voice, but as usual his whisper carried.  “In truth, I have often thought of attempting to find a companion for you as well.  You are well matched with the maiden in more ways than most, as I’m sure you are aware.”

“Yes, and I want to thank you for your  _sensitivity and discretion._ ”  Steve emphasized, glancing up at the camera in the ceiling and praying that Tony never had reason to access the footage.  He shuddered to imagine what he would do if he ever found out that Steve was a virgin.

“Of course, my friend.”  Thor said, squeezing Steve’s shoulder.  “I well understand your desire for privacy in a matter such as this.”

“Thanks.”  Steve said, not entirely sure that Thor  _did_ understand, but willing to trust that he’ll keep the information to himself.

“If you have any need of advice, I ask that you come to me.”  Thor told him seriously.  “While I was unable to care for her, Darcy saw to it that my love remained well.  I value her well being as I value my own.”

“Of course.”  Steve agreed, taken a little aback by how unabashed Thor was with his emotions.

Thor gave his shoulder another squeeze before finally letting go.  “I am too zealous, that I know, but such is the measure of my affection.  If ever you need my assistance in this, you have only to ask.”

Steve thought of Natasha and felt a sudden burst of inspiration.  “Actually, if you really want to help, there's something you could do for us.”

“Name the task, and I shall perform it at once.”  Thor promised instantly, and Steve grinned.


	3. Chapter 3

Darcy had always ranked Natasha right next to Pepper Potts, in terms of class and poise-- and so it wouldn’t be accurate to say that that she was in a ‘huff’.  You couldn't be in an elegant huff.

Darcy was just thankful that those dagger-eyes weren’t pointed at her.

“What did you  _do_?”  Darcy asked Steve, her voice hushed as she watched Natasha stalk from the room while somehow maintaining uninterrupted eye contact.  She seemed to have walked through the theater room just to glare.

Steve was unperturbed, stuffing another handful of popcorn into his mouth while on screen Captain Kirk lost his shirt again.  “I asked Thor to set her up with someone nice.”

Darcy stared at him, impressed and horrified.  “...Who?”

“Bruce.”  Steve said simply, handing her a box of Junior Mints.  Darcy took them automatically.

“That… makes no sense.”  She finally decided, thinking of all the couples that would make more sense than Natasha and  _Bruce._ Bruce and Tony.  Natasha and Pepper.  Even Natasha and Steve seemed like it would work better.

“I know that.”  Steve agreed placidly, but there was something wicked in his eyes when he cast a sideways glance at her.  “But avoiding it should keep her busy for a while.”

“You are much more devious than previously anticipated, Steve.”  Darcy told him, tossing a mint into the air and catching it in her mouth.

Steve opened his mouth and Darcy obligingly threw a piece of candy into it.  “Well, I am the 'Star Spangled Man With A Plan', right?”

Darcy winced.  “Oh god, you’ve watched that movie.”

“Yes.  Yes I have.”  Steve said, opening his mouth again.

“So, what was the most offensive part?”  Darcy tried for two at once.  “The part where you steal a car?”

“I think it was the casual racism.”  Steve decided, wiping a smear of chocolate from the side of his mouth.  “I fought with Jim Morita for years.  I wouldn’t see someone’s Japanese car stereo and assume they were a Nazi.”

Darcy shrugged her mouth in agreement.  “So, do you agree with me about this show being really gay yet?”

“Maybe they just have a very… strong friendship.”  Steve said unconvincingly, eyeing the way Spock’s hands shook as he tried not to touch Kirk.  Darcy raised her eyebrows, and he sighed.  “Okay, yes, there is some gay subtext here.”

“Good.  Now that you are converted, go forth and convince the others,”  Darcy gestured expansively at the door, “Because if I have to have this stupid arguement with Tony  _one more time_ \--”

“Tony?”  Steve said, raising his eyebrows.  “ _Tony_ is on team ‘these guys are so straight’?”

“Yes, he is!”  Darcy insisted.  “At first I thought he was trolling me, but no, he really thinks that.”

“That is… very interesting,”  Steve mused,  “Because I’ve always thought that he and Bruce had a-- what did you call it the other day?”

“A bromance.  They do kind of make heart eyes…”  Darcy admitted, remembering her earlier thoughts.  “Hey-- have you ever thought that Pepper and Natasha might be kind of into each other?”

“I can’t say that I’ve ever seen them together.”  Steve admitted, the gleam back in his eye.  “But I’ll float the idea to Thor.”

“Do fertility gods  _do_ homosexual relationships?”  Darcy wondered.  “I mean, I don’t think Thor cares about that sort of thing one way or the other, but it doesn’t exactly scream ‘baby making opportunities’.  And while we’re at it, what counts as a virgin?  Are we only counting penetrative sex here?  This whole thing seems extremely heteronormative.”

“I… don’t know.”  Steve said, looking uncomfortable.  “I guess I don’t really understand what you mean.”

“I would suggest that you google it but I feel that would be a mistake.”  Darcy bit her lip, already regretting this, but unwilling to leave him ignorant.  A lifetime of horrible public school sex education flashed before her eyes.  “Okay.  So, let’s say I was gay.  Any sex I had would be pretty unlikely to produce a child, right?  So, does that not ‘count’?  That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Wouldn’t that mean it didn’t count if… I mean, if you were with a guy, and he was-- safe?”  Steve hesitated, looking around the room like he was searching for someone who could help him.

“Yeah, exactly.  Condoms!”  Darcy agreed, relieved that while Steve still looked a little thrown by the direction the conversation had gone, he didn’t seem offended.  “If it counts with protection, then gay sex definitely counts I think.  Which means oral sex has to count, right?  And probably manual stimulation as well, just as long as someone else is involved.”

“So, you’ve never… That is not my business.”  Steve corrected himself immediately, holding up his hands to distance himself physically from what he’d just said.  “I apologize.”

Darcy smiled.  “You’re really decent for helping me with this whole thing, Steve.  It’s okay if you want to ask questions.  I mean, I kind of opened the door to that one.”

Steve shook his head, frowning.  “No.  Whatever you’ve done or not done, isn’t anyone’s business.  You don’t need to tell me that sort of thing, unless it’s something  _you_ want to talk about.”

“I don't really mind talking about it I guess, but when Thor brought it up to everyone, I was definitely embarrassed.”  She admitted, helping herself to some of his popcorn so that she didn’t have to look at him.  “Thanks for helping me not look like such a loser.  Sure, I’m a 25 year old virgin, but I’m a 25 year old virgin dating  _Captain America_ , right?”

“...Right.”  Steve agreed, then blew out a breath.  “Darcy, I feel like I should tell you something.”

Darcy watched him rub his hands against his pants nervously, leaving buttery fingerprints on the denim of his jeans.  “I don't think you're a loser.  Maybe when you're in your nineties like me,  _then_ you should start to worry about how bad it looks, but.  I'm sure that won't happen to you.”

“Shut  _up_.”  Darcy blurted out before she could control the reaction, her voice unnecessarily loud.  “I mean-- shit, that was rude, I’m sorry.  Don’t shut up, it’s totally fine for you to talk about it-- does Natasha know?”

“No,”  Steve said, and Darcy recognized how tense he had been only when he relaxed, his shoulders dropping down from their protective hunch.  “I think she suspects I’m not very experienced, but there are a lot of women out there claiming that we were-- together, in that way.”

“Ugh, why do people  _do_ that.”  Darcy groused, her resentment of the boys who had told tales about her over the years easily extending to include Steve’s imaginary exes.  “And it’s like, completely impossible to deny it convincingly, because the more upset you get, the more everyone starts saying shit like ‘methinks she doth protest too much’.”

“Some of the women I’ve met… I think they actually believed it happened.”  Steve’s mouth twisted.  “I don’t know if it’s because they’ve been telling the lie for so long that they’ve convinced themselves, or because someone told them that he was ‘Captain America’ and took advantage of them.  There have been a couple of them that wanted a paternity test, and I hated doing it, because they just looked so  _devastated._ ”

Darcy leaned across the couch to squeeze his hand, thinking about what it would be like to find out that you  _hadn’t_ had a child with a national icon.  You’d just been tricked by some jerk.

Steve flashed her a quick smile at the gesture.  “Most of the kids-- I mean, they’re adults, but,”  He shrugged,  “Still.  I know it’s been difficult for them.”

“You still talk to them, don’t you?”  Darcy asked, and Steve went a little red.

“It’s hard, not knowing your dad.”  He muttered, and Darcy kissed his cheek impulsively.

“You’re great.”  Darcy told him seriously.  “You are like, completely restoring my faith in humanity right now dude.”

“...Thank you.”  Steve said, his blush staring to resemble a rash in its intensity.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve had started to think that they might actually get away with it.  Natasha was very distracted, and Thor thought that taking more than two years to progress farther than kissing Jane was an acceptable relationship timeline.  They could drag this 'dating' thing out indefinitely.

He and Darcy had been dating for more than a month and worked their way through most of his movie list.  He’d make the popcorn, she’d bring candy, and they’d sit on the couch together.  It was like going to a picture with Bucky, right down to the way Darcy liked to talk to the screen.  

Back in the day, they’d always had to go to the matinees and sit in the back-- he likes this a lot more.  It always used to make him a little tense when Bucky would start to complain, because he didn’t want to ruin it for everyone else in the theater.  But alone in Tony’s home theater, he starts to like it.  

Darcy always knows something interesting about the actors, and he finds himself thinking more critically about what he’s watching under her influence, picking up on things like the director’s color palette and the structure of the shots.

They’re arguing about The Matrix when Tony comes looking for him, paused in the middle of the helicopter scene.

“Oh come on, the girl’s name is  _Trinity_.”  Darcy rolled her eyes.  “And Morpheus has that whole ‘all knowing god’ thing going on.  Are you saying Neo isn’t supposed to be Jesus-y?”

“There are religious overtones,”  Steve acknowledged,  “But it seems like the main theme is more… You can see it in their costuming.  The Matrix outfits are all artificial and shiny, like some slick new piece of technology, while the real world is all terrible food and clothing with holes in it.  There’s a sort of sensuality there that isn’t present in the Matrix.  There’s sex, but nothing that feels… softer?  It’s like Neo can’t connect to anyone else because he knows it’s not possible to have anything ‘real’ in that environment.”

Darcy started to work a piece of hair around her index finger, the way she seemed to do whenever she was thinking.  “Yeah, and that’s what bothers me.  They keep presenting reality as this sort of unpleasant thing, and pleasure seeking as inherently negative.  Like they killed off Mouse right away, and his defining characteristic is having an interest in sex, ie The Woman in Red.  Very puritanical.  The only other character we see in red is Cypher, and when we see him betraying them with that Agent, he’s talking about the pleasure he gets from food.  So there’s this whole ‘rejection of the physical’ thing, like ‘pleasure for pleasure’s sake is bad’, that feels very Christian to me.”

“It reminds me of the USO tour I did.  It was like what that Agent Smith said, about people rejecting the ‘perfect world’.”  Steve frowned, trying to articulate how he had felt.  “There was this version of the war, or… of America… that we were supposed to be projecting.  And a lot of people liked it better that way, but whenever we were in front of soldiers, people who knew how it really was, they hated it.”

“Did you hate it?”  Darcy asked, and Steve shrugged.

“I-- yeah.”  He admitted, smiling crookedly.  “I got everything I’d ever wanted, and I just wanted to be back home with Bucky.  Eating terrible food and wearing clothes with holes in them.”

“I get that.  I guess that’s not how reality’s been for me, though.”  She sat up straighter and shook her hair back.  “The world is so goddamn amazing… Like, the whole reason we’re watching this is so that I can show you one of the Animatrix shorts where these kids find a glitch in the Matrix and play around with it, because I’ve basically had that happen to me.  That’s what the world really is, it’s… miracles.”  She shook her head and smiled, like something fantastic was happening right in front of her.  “We know people who can fly, and do magic, and it’s fucking  _amazing_.  I can’t believe that everything being grey and shitty is more ‘real’ than that.”

Steve didn’t know how to answer that.  He’d seen a lot of incredible things, but none of them made him excited anymore.  The way that she described it, though… he wanted to see things that way.  Like the world wasn’t a hostile place with a few good things struggling to survive in it, but a place where everything was incredible.

“Lewis, you are adorably optimistic,”  Tony said from the doorway,  “But in my experience, most of the ‘miracles’ want to kill you.”

“Tony, I was almost getting killed by Loki  _before_ it was cool.”  Darcy stuck her tongue out.  “But I am not going to let that asshole, or any other assholes, dull my sparkle.”

“ ’Dull your sparkle’?”  Tony repeated, opening his mouth like he needed to taste the words.  “I can’t even… no.  Not getting dragged down into that.”  He shook his head and then nodded at Steve.  “I’m here because I need this one in the lab.  And I wanted to snoop on your date, but you two are surprisingly boring.  I was expecting to at least catch you ‘necking’.”

Steve glanced at the space between them on the couch.  “But Tony, we have to leave room for Jesus.”

Tony’s grin wilted rapidly in the face of Steve’s completely serious expression.  “That was a joke.  That’s what I’m telling myself that was.  I’m serious, I need you.  You and Lewis can get back to sitting vaguely near each other later.”

Steve got to his feet and glanced back at Darcy, reluctant to leave.  “Are you-- do you want to finish this when I’m done?”

“Sure,”  She leaned over to grab her laptop from underneath the lip of the couch,  “I have some internet stuff to do, I can hang out for a while.”

“Great, I’ll see you in a few then.”  He felt a nervousness about coming back that he tried not to dwell on.

Tony made it all the way to the elevators before he started trying to pry.

“So, is she the Juliet to your Romeo?  The Isolde to your Tristan?  The...”  Tony paused, searching for another example of epic romance.

“The Kirk to my Spock?”  Steve suggested, following Tony into the elevator with his most innocent wide eyes.

“No, that’s-- how do you even know about that?”  He demanded, making a gesture that JARVIS must have interpreted at ‘take us to the lab’, because the elevator started moving.  

“We did have homosexuals in the 40's, Tony.”  Steve said, deliberately misunderstanding.  “Or, wait.  Since they don’t seem to have an issue with inter-species dating, maybe it would be more accurate to say they’re both pansexual.”

“What the hell has Lewis been telling you?”  Tony rubbed his goatee like a movie villain.  “Let’s just table the Kirk/Spock thing,  _which you are wrong about_ , and address the much more relevant issue of when and how you’re going to devirginize your girlfriend.  Because normally, I would be a big advocate of the ‘let's watch a movie together’ date, that usually means ‘lets sit near each other in my dark bedroom and whoops suddenly we’re getting naked’, but it seems like you’re doing it wrong, Rogers.”

“Tony, no.”  Steve said, and experienced an intense feeling of deja vu from all the times he’d had to say that before.

“No, why no?”  Tony raised his eyebrows with actual surprise.  “I am right here, this vast well of seduction experience, and you are refusing to tap me.”

The closest thing Steve had experienced to a seduction was that secretary who had kissed him back during the war.  It wouldn’t have been right to say that she’d done it against his will-- he could have stopped it.  It hadn't been anything like kissing Peggy.  When he thought about Peggy he didn't know if he was sad or happy, but he was glad it had happened.  When he thought about kissing that secretary... the whole thing made him feel embarrassed and a little ashamed of himself.  He didn't want to feel that way about Darcy-- or make her feel that way about him.  “Because, I don’t want to ‘seduce’ Darcy, and I’m really not comfortable talking about her this way.”

Tony sighed.  “Ugh, fine, be a good upstanding gentleman about it.  See if I care.”

“You care,”  Steve squeezed Tony’s shoulder,  “And thank you, but this isn’t something I need help with.”

“Are you sure, though?”  He pressed, rubbing up into Steve’s hand like a cat,  “Because there was at least a foot and a half between you, Rogers.  There was enough room for  _Jesus._ ”

“You’re right, I’m doing it wrong,”  Steve conceded.  “I mean, if it doesn’t lead immediately to sex, what is the point of interacting with women at all?”

Tony walked away grumbling about ‘smartasses’.


	5. Chapter 5

Steve had been almost obsessively punctual to their dates-- he showed up fifteen minutes early wearing a button up shirt like it was a job interview-- so Darcy didn’t think it was unreasonable to call when he was half an hour late.

It rang three times before someone who was definitely  _not_ Steve answered, growling in a tone that Darcy tried and failed not to be intimidated by.  “Who is this?”

“Um-- Darcy?  I just wanted to see if… well, Steve’s never late, so.”  She answered uncertainly, wondering if she should be giving her name to someone who sounded like they could murder her.

There was a long moment of silence.  When he spoke again, his whole demeanor seemed to have shifted.  “He supposed to be meeting you, sweetheart?  Don’t hold it against him, ‘s my fault.  Stevie’s usually got more manners than that.”

“It’s okay,”  Darcy said slowly, even more off balance,  “We can do it another night.”

“What’s he doing with you?”  The man asked, his voice betraying a level of curiosity that almost reminded her of Natasha.  

Darcy gave the phone a sideways glance, but decided to answer.  “Just a movie, like we always do.”

“That all he ever do with you?  Take you to the pictures?”  He demanded, sounding offended.  “How long he been steppin’ out with you?”

Darcy tried to remember when they’d gone on their first ‘date’ and failed.  “A month and a half?”  She hazarded.  

“I’m gonna fix him.”  The man said seriously, his voice almost as intimidating as it had been at the start of the conversation.  “He knows better than to treat a dame that way.”

“I-- no, it’s fine.”  Darcy protested, already dreading the inevitable horrible dinner dates she would start getting dragged to when this became too much of a hassle for Steve and she was back to dealing with Thor’s matchmaking.  “I mean, it’s not like we’re really dating or anything.”

The silence on the other end of the line felt icy.  “I’m gonna fix him.”  He repeated, and hung up.

Darcy decided that she should probably just take her Rolos to bed, because she needed her rest to deal with the horrible things that were about to happen to her.  Like bowling with Jake from the IT department.

 

Steve really did intend to tell Bucky about Darcy at some point.  It was just that, well, Bucky agreed with Natasha.  He’d always thought Steve should be dating, even when no one wanted to date him-- now that they did, he had no idea what the hold up was.

Steve didn’t have the heart to tell him that  _Steve_ had always been the hold up.  There had been ladies who were interested, even then-- he’d just never tried that hard.  Even with Peggy, he’d held back, and she had been everything he’d wanted.  There was just some part of him that always hesitated.

He didn’t want to lie to Bucky, so he’d just kept Darcy to himself.

He was getting the first aid kit down from above the kitchen sink when Bucky slammed into the room.

“So, I hear you’re standing up girls now.”  He said dangerously.  Steve glanced from the blood running down his arm to the phone in Bucky’s hand and realized with a sinking feeling that it was Wednesday.  

“I-- yeah, I forgot what day it was.”  Steve agreed, and tried to smile.  “Darcy won’t mind.”

“Oh, won’t she?  Understanding girl you’ve got there.  You must treat her right.”  Bucky stared at him until he looked away, faintly embarrassed even though he knew that Darcy didn’t want him to bring her flowers and start taking her out dancing.  She just wanted to be left alone, like he did.  

“You know she thinks you’re ‘not really dating’?  This some modern ‘no strings attached’ thing?”  Bucky demanded, and Steve almost sagged in relief.  

“We’re not.”  He agreed, and waited for Bucky to sit down at the table and let him stitch up the cut on his arm, but he didn’t move.

“This her?”  He asked, holding up Steve’s phone.  It was something Tony had given him, which meant it synced with his database.

The picture Tony had picked for Darcy in his files was nicer than Steve would have expected, her hair falling over her shoulders while she holds a cup of coffee in what he recognizes as the tower’s kitchen.  She’s wearing a black collared shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a purple camisole underneath, and Steve wonders if she was in the middle of getting ready for work, because he’s never seen her dress like that.  

“Yeah, that’s her.”  Steve acknowledged, and Bucky made a disgusted noise.

“So she’s gorgeous, she’s nice, and she’s willing to tolerate you.”  Bucky listed.  “So what’s wrong with her?”

“There’s nothing wrong with her, Buck, I just don’t… I’m busy.”  He said, helpless to articulate himself, and he held up the hands holding the first aid kit on accident.  Bucky’s eyes focused in on it like it was significant, and he nodded to himself.

“You’re busy.  I get it.”  He muttered, and sat down to let Steve treat his injuries.

It should have been a red flag, how easily Bucky had let it go, but Steve was too relieved to question it.


	6. Chapter 6

There was a guy leaning in the hallway outside of Jane’s lab, and Darcy couldn’t shake the feeling that he was there for her.

 _You’re being paranoid,_ she chastised herself.  There was no way for Thor to know there was anything going on with Steve-- he couldn’t possibly be setting her up with guys again.   _She_ wasn’t even sure there was a problem yet, although that guy had definitely sounded like a problem…

Darcy turned back to examine the man through the lab window again.

He didn’t exactly strike her as Thor’s type, but she had a hard time picturing him as scary voice guy either.  He had long hair pulled back from his face in a ponytail that looked a bit unkempt, but he was clean shaven, and his clothes were nice.  

It was honestly the button up that decided her.  Steve was the only other guy she knew who dressed that way.

When she raised her eyebrows at him, he at least had the good grace to look awkward.  Then he smiled, looking up at her through his lashes in a way that screamed ‘I did something bad, but you want to forgive me because I’m so adorable’.  It was absolutely intentional, and absolutely effective.

 _Please go away before I have to go out there,_ Darcy prayed uselessly, because Jane was already stacking up her files to take home as some light pre-bed reading.  She stalled, wiping coffee rings off of the counters, arranging Jane’s markers, until she found herself staring at the contents of her purse like there might be something in there that could help her.

Lipgloss did not seem helpful.  It in fact seemed anti-helpful.  

“So, seems like you’re hiding from me.”

Darcy flinched at the sound of his voice and had to scramble not to dump everything in her bag onto the floor.  “Shit, dude.  Did you just think, ‘Oh, I’m not being intimidating enough lurking outside of this room, better go inside and pull a fucking jumpscare’.”

“I’m... sorry.  You’re right, I-- sorry.”  When Darcy turned to look at him, he wasn’t even in the doorway, already backing up into the hallway with his hands in his pockets, the flirty demeanor nowhere in sight.  It was oddly reminiscent of the way his voice had changed on the phone.

She sighed and followed him.  “Look, you’re Steve’s friend, right?  The one I talked to the other night?”

“Yeah, Steve’s friend.”  He rubbed at his left sleeve like he was cold.  “I should have phoned first, I just-- Steve doesn’t go out much, you know?  Guess I wanted to… I dunno.  Have dinner, or something.  Get to know his girl.”

Oh god, that sincere puppy look was back.  “I don’t know what Steve’s told you, but this whole dating thing is just him doing me a favor.”  Darcy admitted.  “So, I don’t think it’d be worth your time to try to get to know me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, you said something like that before.  You mind explaining why taking a girl like you out would be a ‘favor’?  Unless you’re the one doing him the favor-- I could buy that.”

Darcy felt the beginning of a tension headache in the back of her skull and tried to relax the muscles in her neck.  “It’s a favor.”  She said shortly.  “And I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t give him a bunch of shit about it, because I really don’t want to deal with people trying to set me up all the time.

“Ah,”  He said sagely, nodding.  “Natasha.”

“Thor, actually, but same difference I suppose.”  Darcy gave him a quick assessment and decided he was weird but not actually dangerous.  “I am actually starving, though, so either we’re done with this conversation or I guess you can watch me eat, Mr. Steve’s friend.”

“Bucky.”  He supplied, offering his right hand.  “And didn’t I say I wanted to take you to dinner?”

He didn’t so much shake hands as hold her hand for a few seconds before letting go, his skin warm.  It was comforting, in a strange way.

 

When Steve set his keys on the table next to the front door, he assumed he was hearing the television.  One of those sitcoms where they played the sound of laughter over everything you were supposed to think was funny.  It took him a moment to realize that he was hearing Bucky.

It wasn’t that Bucky didn’t laugh.  But it was usually a snort of derision, instead of what sounded like something close to hysteria.

“He seemed really drunk!” A voice insisted as he walked to the living room, and Steve recognized Darcy’s voice with a jolt.  “He just kept like,  _bellowing_  ‘HAMMER! HAAAAAAAAAAMMER!’, it was freaking me out.”

From the doorway Steve took in how comfortable their posture was on the couch.  They’d both taken their shoes off, and Dacy was sitting crosslegged with her back to the door while Bucky’s leg rested partially in her lap.  He had his head resting against his knee while he recovered.  

“S-so you  _tased_ him?”  Bucky asked, his voice catching as he tried to stop laughing.  “He’s the god of thunder, and you  _tased him._ ”

“Yes, I did.”  Darcy looked completely unabashed by the admission.

The way Bucky looked at her before he noticed Steve in the doorway was… he didn’t know how to classify it, but it made something in his chest hurt.

“Hey Stevie.”  He said, grinning, his expression open in a way it hadn’t been for longer than he cared to admit.  “I got your girl here telling some big fish stories.”

“I heard from Thor that one’s actually true.”  Steve said, smiling back because it was impossible not to.  “I think he’s probably more proud of it than she is.”

“Alright, well what about--”  He started with a sly glance at Darcy, who immediately plastered her hands over his mouth to muffle the rest.

“ _I told you that in confidence._ ”  She hissed, her hands lingering on Bucky’s face for a moment before she pulled them back suddenly with a look of disgust.

“Did you-- did you just  _lick_  me?”  She demanded, staring at her wet palms in disbelief.

Bucky cracked up, and she lunged at him.  Steve watched them spill onto the floor as she tried to tickle him with a sense of unreality.  She seemed to be going for the skin near the juncture of his left arm, like she didn’t mind the metal, and Bucky seemed to be  _letting_ her.  He did eventually get her pinned, but there was nothing about Darcy that would have presented a challenge to him.  If he hadn’t wanted to be touched, he could have stopped her before it had even happened.  

When Bucky leaned down and ran his tongue across her cheek, Steve felt his mouth fall open.  

“Ew, ew, ew,”  Darcy squeaked out compulsively, her eyes shut tight, but she didn’t seem to be struggling that hard to get out of his hold.  “ _Help_ , Steve, send help, I-- oh my god, you are  _disgusting!_ ”

Steve slapped a hand over the lower half of Bucky’s face to keep him from licking her again.  “Buck, c’mon, lay off.”

Bucky rolled his eyes but rolled off of Darcy without complaint, helping her up with a hand that she regarded suspiciously before she accepted it.

“So, we already had dinner,”  Bucky started to pull his hair back up, the elastic that had been holding it in place having worked itself loose during the tussle.  “But we were gonna go to the pictures in an hour, if you wanna join?”

“Ah, no, I have a,”  He tried to think of a good lie.  “A lot of paperwork to catch up on.  Mission reports.”

Darcy wrinkled her nose.  “Ugh, that sucks.  You wanna at least get a coffee with us first?  There’s a good place a few blocks from the theater that’s open late.”

“I-- sure.  I guess so.”  Steve agreed, stuffing his hands uncomfortably in his back pockets.  

Darcy’s eyebrows drew together at his body language, and she glanced at Bucky.  “Right.  Um, I’m gonna go freshen up.  Or whatever.  Let me know when you’re ready.”

She grabbed her purse and ducked into the hallway.

Bucky watched her go with a frown, then turned his attention to Steve.  “Thought you two weren’t really together?”

“We’re not.”  Steve said, with more force than was necessary.

Bucky’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline.  “Alright…”  He said slowly.  “Look-- I don’t wanna step on your toes here.  If you’re interested, you just gotta say it, and I’ll back off.”

“No, of course--”  He shook his head to clear it.  “You should go for it.  Darcy’s great.”  

“You sure?”  Bucky asked, but he was already looking happier.

“Yeah,”  Steve hoped his smile looked more sincere than it felt,  “‘Course I’m sure.”


	7. Chapter 7

As soon as Bucky got up from the table to get their drinks, Darcy turned to Steve.

“Is it weirding you out that I was at your house?”  She asked, deciding that blunt was the best way to approach this given the obvious time constraints.  “Because I know that we were just kind of a Wednesday thing.  Bucky seemed to think it was okay, but you seem kind of…”  Darcy shrugged, not wanting to put words in his mouth.

“I-- no, it’s fine that you came over.”  Steve said, looking caught off guard.  “That’s not-- Why wouldn’t I?”

Darcy glanced at Bucky across the room, tucking Steve’s hot chocolate into the curve of his arm while he balanced their coffees in his hands.  “Well.  I’m sure you wanna like, spend time with your buddy, instead of with some random girl you’re pity dating.  It was kind of invasive of me to show up uninvited, I can see why it might bug you.  I tried to explain the situation to Bucky, but he was pretty insistent anyway… Like, don’t feel you have to hang out with me if you don’t want to.”

“I do!  I like-- movie things.”  Steve rubbed a hand over his eyes like his own incoherence annoyed him.

Bucky settled into his chair, giving Steve’s posture a raised eyebrow as he set their drinks in front of them.

“ _Did you bring up the Dodgers,”_ He stage whispered, leaning close enough to Darcy’s ear that a stray piece of his hair touched her cheek,  “ _Because I told you, he’s still not over it._ ”

Steve dropped the hand from his face.  “I do not want to hear that from someone whom I have  _personally witnessed--_ ”

“Okay, yes,”  Bucky agreed, looking uncomfortable,  “No need to go into the details, Stevie, I mean, is that really--”

“ _Spit on a man’s grave_.”  He finished with grim determination.  “And it’s not like Walter O’Malley was buried in New York, Buck, you had to go to Los Angeles to do it.”

They both seemed to be awaiting some kind of judgement from her, so Darcy shrugged.  “...I have no idea what you’re talking about?”

The groan they made in tandem was loud enough to attract looks from the adjacent tables.  “The  _Brooklyn Dodgers_ , Darcy.”  Bucky said, looking outraged that any explaination needed to be given.

“Walter O’Malley sold the team to LA, in 1957.”  Steve elaborated.  “Um.  Baseball?”

“Yes.  Sport ball.”  Darcy nodded seriously, just to hear Bucky make that complaining moan again.  “No, okay, I knew about that, I just didn’t know the guy’s name.  Also I’m not from New York, if that makes you feel better.”

“It does not.”  Bucky assured her, reaching over to take a punitive drink from her mocha.

“Steve--”  Darcy started, but he was already plucking the drink from his friend’s hold and handing it back to her before she could finish voicing her complaint.

“Thank you.”  She said, looking down at her mocha and feeling oddly touched while Bucky scowled.  

“I see how it is.”  He muttered, taking Steve’s hot chocolate instead.  “As soon as someone hotter than me shows up, I’m abandoned.”

Steve raised his eyebrows.  “Yes.  That is the only reason I’ve been keeping you around.  Window dressing.”

“Wouldn’t he just, like, hang out exclusively with Pepper Potts then?”  Darcy mused, enough of her crush leaking into her voice that both men turned to stare at her.  “What?”

“Nothing, you just… sounded a little dreamy there, sweetheart.”  Bucky said, smirking a little.  “Didn’t know you were ‘open minded’.”

“I guess I don’t really know what I am.”  She swirled the contents of her cup, just to have something to do with her hands.  “I mean, everything’s pretty theoretical for me at this point.  But Pepper is so nice, and she smells good, and she always has really great shoes…”  She shrugged her mouth.

Steve’s eyebrows drew together.  “Yeah, but that’s just… admiration.  You just like her aesthetic.”

“Her aesthetic?”  Bucky responded sceptically.  “Whatever.  It’s fine either way, right?  Nothing wrong with a little ‘admiration’.”

“Well, if we’re not counting ‘admiring’ then I don’t know… I mean, I don’t really look at anyone and think ‘Oh yes, I must do the sex things with them’.  It’s more like ‘he’s handsome’ or ‘she’s pretty’, and maybe eventually I might get mentally to picturing something physical, but even then it’s like, I don’t even know if I would actually want that if it happened?  Like, in here,”  She tapped the side of her head,  “It seems good, and then the opportunity presents itself in real life and I am like ‘no, do not want, why am I trying to humiliate myself right now’.”

Bucky just blinked at her, but Steve was nodding with understanding.

“Why would it be humiliating?”  Bucky asked, looking between them with a baffled expression.  “I mean, sure, if you’re throwing yourself at someone and they don’t want you, yeah, but if you’re both interested, what’s the problem?”

“I don’t really know if I can explain.”  She admitted, breaking the plastic rim of her lid with a thumbnail.  “It’s… like, say I like someone, and they like me back, and we do the sex or whatever, and that part’s fine.  But then, they’ve got all of this really personal information about you, right?  Like they know if you’ve got stretch marks, or if you like to have your toes sucked, or whatever else that you don’t want everyone to know about.  And they’re totally going to tell other people some of that stuff-- maybe not even to be mean about it, just because they want to talk to their buddy about something that happened to them, or for advice or something.”

Darcy popped off the lid and started tearing the plastic into tiny strips.  “And I know that it’s not a big deal, like, who actually cares, but it basically makes me want to throw up just thinking about it.  So it’s like, sure, it seems nice, you like someone, you get to kiss them, yay, but for me it feels like I just printed off a bunch of fliers about everything that’s wrong with me and handed them out to everyone I know.  And I’d just rather  _not._ ”

“So,”  Bucky propped his feet casually against Steve’s chair,  “As someone who has more than one book written about his sex life, I feel I am uniquely qualified to answer this question, ‘What if you sleep with someone and they tell everyone all about it’.”

“It sucks.”  He shrugged, like it didn’t matter, but his smile had some bitterness in it.  “And yeah, there’s some stuff out there that I wish people had had the class to keep to themselves.  But… I dunno, Darce.  There’s a lot of things that I’ve done that have diminished me, and I don’t think what I like in bed is one of those things.  You’re not comfortable in your own head about what you’re into, of course you’re gonna think everyone else is gonna laugh about it, but… believe me, most people are pretty weird, once they let their guards down.  Unless you’re doing something to someone who doesn’t want it, there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

He kept his tone casual, but the way he was looking at her was too intense not to be taken seriously.  She averted her eyes and caught Steve staring at him with something complicated on his face.  

When he noticed her glance he gave her a reassuring smile.  “Bucky never did kiss and tell.”  He promised.  “I mean, he’d go out with a lot of girls, and obviously-- but he never did that.  Told anybody details.”

Bucky pushed Steve’s chair with his foot.  “Stop helping, punk.”  He glanced at his watch.  “So, if we’re gonna be on time for the pictures we should probably start walking.  You coming, Stevie?”

Steve leaned across the table to collect the desiccated remains of Darcy’s lid in his palm.  “I’ve got paperwork.”

“Whatever you say, pal.”  Bucky muttered under his breath, getting to his feet to offer Darcy his arm.

She tucked her hand into the curve of his elbow but hesitated.  “So… next Wednesday?”

Steve’s eyes shot up in surprise.  “Uh…”  His glance darted to Bucky like he was looking for permission.  Bucky tilted his head slightly.  “Sure.”

“You should come over for it.”  Bucky suggested, then threw Steve a wink.  “Our place is a lot less crowded.”

“There _would_  be less Natasha glaring.”  Darcy agreed, completely oblivious to the subtext.


	8. Chapter 8

Bucky had always avoided being in the tower in the past, especially the labs floors, but there was some old-fashioned gentleman part of his personality that made him insist on picking Darcy up whenever they were going to hang out.  There was a tension in his shoulders that loosened as soon as their feet hit the pavement, but even so, he would come in and wait for her.  

Jane had noticed him standing with his back to the wall in the hallway a few times, before something distracted her, but apparently she hadn’t made the connection between his presence and Darcy.

Tony made it in ten seconds.

“Hey Lewis, you double dipping?”  He asked as he walked into the lab, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

Darcy popped her headphones out and looked up from her spreadsheet.  “What?”

Tony pointed to Bucky with his head.  “Barnes waiting for you, or do I need to page Rogers to pick up his lost kid at Customer Service?”

“He’s waiting for me.”  Darcy confirmed, and paused with her earbuds halfway to her ears when Tony smirked at her.  She raised her eyebrows questioningly.  

“So,”  He propped his elbows on the counter to learn in close,  “Here I was, all set to give Rogers advice, when you’re the real mastermind.  That is an ambitious move, doubling down on your first try.”

Darcy wanted to tell him that she wasn’t even ‘singling’ down, but instead she just gave him a long, disgusted stare.

“Don’t you give me your face, missy.”  Tony said inanely, pointing a finger dangerously close to her face.  “You can’t just parade something like that around and expect to not receive the benefit of my years of experience.”

“Yes.  This was all clearly a ploy for your attention.”  Darcy said, draining her voice of all inflection.  “That’s why I did it here, on a sub basement level that you never come to.”

“I come down here sometimes.”  Tony protested.  “Like now, I am here now.  To help you.”

“Why is everyone so invested in my sex life?”  Darcy asked rhetorically.  “I so don’t want you to help me with this.  I want whatever the opposite of that is.”

“I’m assuming Rogers knows about this.  I mean, how could he not, they live together, and Barnes at least has enough game to get you over to his place.”  He continued, unperturbed.  “Which begs the question, is this like an ‘I have two boyfriends’ kind of thing, or a ‘three’s company’ situation.”

“I think it’s a ‘none of your business’.”  Darcy told him, getting up to walk across room.

He followed her.  “Rogers has to be way too 1940s to have come up with this plan, which leaves you and Barnes in the hot seat.”

“Or, here’s a shocking thought--  _maybe we’re friends._ ”  Darcy widened her eyes.  “I know, it’s unheard of!  Adult men and women!  Spending time around each other!  And not fucking!”

“Language!”  Tony gasped, putting a hand to his chest like an offended southern belle.  “Yeah, no.  You’re not friends.  Rogers has been carrying a torch for that guy like he’s prepping for the Olympics, so if you’re dating him, you and Barnes are not ‘friends’.”

“Wait-- what?”  Darcy stopped trying to walk away from him.  “Okay, back up.  Why do you think that?  Did Steve say something to you?”

“...Have you met Steve?”  Tony asked, staring at her.  “Are you even dating him?  Have I fallen into an alternate reality, where Steve talks about his feelings?”

Darcy frowned, then pocketed her iPod and headed for the door.

Bucky looked up from whatever game he’d been playing on his phone, his back still braced against the wall.  “Hey sweetheart.  You done early?”

“I-- sure.”  Darcy decided, thinking of Tony’s weird converversational ambush.  “You know what, yes.  I’m done.”

 

Being around Bucky was always relaxing for Darcy, especially in public.  Maybe people found him intimidating, or it was just that she wasn’t alone, but no one had ever catcalled her when she was with him.

Today was the exception.  

The first time she'd been street harassed, Darcy had been ten, walking home from school with a friend.  Laura had turned to wave at the man who had honked his car horn at them and then frowned.  “I don’t know him.  Did you know him?”

At the time Darcy had found it confusing, but now she dreamed about men in cars who only honked at her.  

Today’s guy isn’t so bad, really.  He’s well below the most disturbing thing that has been said to her (which was, for the record: “You’re just a home-grown country girl, ain’t cha?”), and on a good day, she might have found it funny that this guy thought she needed to know he had “a big dick and a lot of money”.  

But he calls her sweetheart first, and for some reason, it feels like a slap.

Preoccupied with her own hurt feelings, it took Darcy a moment to register that Bucky had pulled the guy out of his car and seemed to be mugging him.

“You know pal, you’ve only got about 40 bucks in here.”  He observed casually, rifling through a black leather wallet with one hand.  The catcaller’s face was almost purple, held against his car by the throat.  He looked young, a guy in his twenties in a tanktop and shorts, one of his boat shoes starting to fall off from being suspended in the air by Bucky’s metal arm.  “That doesn’t really seem like a lot of money to me.  Guess it’s enough to take my girl out to dinner with though, as an apology.”

He tucked two bills into his pocket and slid the wallet back into the man’s pocket.  “I’m sure you wanna apologize.  For being so rude.”

Bucky loosened his grip on his throat to let him speak.  

“Get fucked.”  He rasped, and was slammed against his car again.  Darcy glanced at the backed up traffic behind the car and caught several people recording video on their cellphones.

He stopped struggling the moment Bucky grabbed the front of his shorts in a way that looked painful.

“See you were lying about that part, too.”  Bucky commented, his smirk showing far too many teeth.  “Now I’m gonna let you try again.  Apologize to the lady.”

He gasped out an apology and Bucky let him scramble back into the car unmolested, wiping his hand off on his pants before offering it to Darcy again.

“That was so stupid.”  She told him, right before she wrapped her arms around his waist in the most necessary hug of her life.

“Guess you like stupid, then.”  Bucky observed, squeezing her shoulders.

"We should leave before you get arrested."  Darcy informed his chest, but neither of them moved.


	9. Chapter 9

Darcy was halfway through her first cup of coffee when Thor started braiding her hair, which was at least one cup less than she needed to process what was happening.

He seemed to have no intention of offering an explanation unprompted, humming cheerfully to himself as he worked what felt like several small, tight braids into a ring around her head.

“So, not that I don’t appreciate... a nice updo,”  Darcy gestured vaguely, not sure what exactly she should call what he was doing,  “But what is inspiring this?”

Thor frowned, at either the question or the difficulty of the hairstyle he was attempting.  “It is the day of your meeting with the Captain, is it not?”

“Yes…”  Darcy agreed, beginning to feel suspicious of his attentions.  “Thor, are you blessing me or something?”

“There is but small magic in this.”  Thor said, resting a hand briefly on her shoulder.  “I merely wish to offer encouragement.”

“Sure.”  Darcy agreed, determined not to ask why.  “Thanks buddy.”

“I have long desired to find you a suitable companion,”  He continued, unasked.  “But, I did not sense you would be receptive.”

“When you say ‘sense’, is this like the virgin thing?”  Darcy questioned, enjoying the light pull on her scalp as he braided.  “Or is it like how I sense you’ve eaten all of the poptarts?”  

Thor pursed his lips, searching for the words.  “What I sense… it is as one knows the presence of fire.”  He decided.  “There are many ways to know fire.  Heat, smoke.  The scent and sound of catching flame.”

He pulled an elastic from around his wrist to secure the end of her final braid.  “This is the most concise explanation I am able to offer.”  

“Hmm.”  Darcy ran a hand over her completed hairstyle to feel the tiny braids.  “So, what, do I feel ‘warmer’ or something now?”  

Thor shrugged his shoulders and leaned down to press a kiss to Darcy’s forehead.

 

He’d said it wasn’t a blessing, but Darcy found herself rubbing at the place he had kissed the whole rest of the day.

And whatever he’d done to her hair seemed weirdly attractive to people.

“Jane,” Darcy protested, shoving her friend’s hand off of her head, “You’re doing it again.”

“Sorry,” Jane smiled sheepishly,  “I don’t know why I can’t stop.”

“It’s not just you, Tony rubbed his  _face_ on me.”  Darcy pointed out.  

Jane wrinkled up her nose at the memory.  “True… and Bruce is stopping by later.  Maybe you should go home early.”

Darcy tried to decide who would be more upset by Bruce hitting on her, herself or Bruce.  “I am leaving right now.”

She walked into the elevator with every intention of going straight to her apartment and tearing out all weird little braids before she saw Steve.  She didn’t notice that Steve was already  _in_ said elevator until the door had closed.

“Hey Darcy.”  He said, eye traveling upward immediately.  “I like your hair.”

“I don’t.”  She muttered under her breath.  “Hey Steve.  We still doing movies later?”

“Sure.”  He agreed with a smile, then bit his lip hesitantly.  “Actually, I’m done for the day, if you want to-- do you want to come over and have dinner?  Bucky’s cooking.”

Darcy reached up to touch the spot on her forehead that Thor had kissed unconsciously.  “I need to take a shower first.”  She said, because she couldn’t say  _I can’t, I need to go scrub the magic off of me._

Steve shrugged.  “I can wait.”

 

Maybe it was that he’d never been around her when it was freshly washed, but Steve had never been as attracted to anything as he was to Darcy’s hair that evening.  He’d always thought it looked nice, shiny and soft, but he’d never felt this compelled to touch it.  

The first time, there really is something in her hair.  A little piece of paper.  Is it strictly necessary for him to run his fingers through it afterwards?  No.  But there  _was_  something in her hair.

“Hold still, there’s another one.”  He said, pinching an invisible nothing off of her and leaning close to inhale the clean, fruity smell of her conditioner.

Darcy made a grumble of annoyance, but held still while he finger-combed through the rest of her hair.  “I swear to god, I have like, static cling right now.  Why is everything  _sticking_ to me?”

“I think I got it all this time.”  Steve assured her, taking a step back in the hope that the distance would make a psychological difference.  It wasn’t so much that he wanted to touch her hair, really.  It was that she seemed comfortable letting him.  

He got to run his fingers through Darcy’s hair one more time before the movie began and she curled into one of their pillows and started to complain at the screen.  

“Oh, god, I forgot how horrible this song is.”  She said, covering her ears as a woman wailed dramatically.  “And how boring the whole beginning is.  And how much I hate this movie.  Can we just fast forward to the part I want to show you and then watch something else?”  

“Why did you want to watch it, then?”  Steve asked, handing her the remote so she could tab through the scene selection screen.

“Because I need you to be ready when someone-- and by someone I mean Tony-- asks you to draw him like ‘one of your french girls’.”  She selected the scene and then immediately paused it.  “Okay, so, here’s what you missed.  She’s a fancy socialite who this guy caught trying to kill herself, and he’s a broke artist who’s on the ship because he won a ticket playing cards.  They’re having a forbidden romance or whatever.”

Bucky’s eyebrows shot up his forehead when Kate Winslet dropped her robe.  “That is a beautiful naked woman.”  He observed.

“Yes.”  Darcy confirmed.  “Kate Winslet, man.  As much as I am not into this movie, I am so into Kate Winslet  _in_  this movie.”

Bucky nodded, giving the woman a serious appraisal.  “I think she kind of looks like you.”

Darcy raised an eyebrow.  “That’s… hmm.  No.”

“Same face shape, lips,”  Bucky gestured to her face before picking up a piece of her hair.  “Hair’s not the same color, but, same curl.”

“...I really can’t tell if you’re messing with me right now.”  Darcy admitted.  “But if that’s true then apparently I find myself very attractive.  Like I would definitely make out with me, and I feel weird about that.”

Bucky shrugged lavishly, frowning when his feet resting on the coffee table knocked against a plate.  “I’d make out with me.”

Steve choked hard enough that Darcy paused the movie to clap him on the back while Bucky dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward to collect the plate.  “Your arms broken, pal?”

Steve wiped the tears the hacking had brought to his eyes, feeling dazed.  “Um.  No?”

“Hand to god, he’s always been like this.”  Bucky leaned close to Darcy, as if he thought they were engaged in a private conversation.  “Can’t pick up a dish.  Or, he’ll pick it up, and just leave it in the sink.  We bought a dishwasher, and I thought ‘This is it, Steve’s finally gonna start washing the dishes.  It’s finally gonna happen’.  No.  There’s a machine for it right there, and he still just sets it in the sink.”

“I was gonna get to it.”  Steve protested, although he’d forgotten about it completely until that moment.  

“See, and then he says that,”  Bucky continued in that same soft undertone,  “But what he means is ‘I was gonna leave that on the table for at least a day before I even noticed it was still there, and then, I was gonna set it in the sink’.”

“Okay, no.”  Darcy held up her hands, and for a moment Steve thought she might be about to defend him.  “I don’t want to hear that from anyone who doesn’t live with Jane.  The first week I moved here, as an experiment, I was like ‘I’m gonna leave this cup on the counter, and see how long it takes Jane to clean up after herself’.”

She leaned forward to make more intense eye contact.  “Bucky?   _It’s still there._ ”

In the silence that followed, Bucky reached out to pat Darcy on the shoulder.  

“I know there’s nothing I can say to make it better.”  He said solemnly.  “But I understand your pain.”  


	10. Chapter 10

It was hard for Darcy to admit to herself how much she liked it when Steve ran his fingers through her hair.  It felt illicit because of the Thor thing-- like she was tricking him into doing it.

It wasn’t just him.  She’d always enjoyed getting her hair cut, when the hairdresser would wash her hair for her.  It was hard to say why it was so nice-- some vestigial monkey part of her brain that craved social grooming, maybe.  

If she was being honest with herself, she wanted Bucky to do it too.  

 _That_ felt more than illicit.  

It made her feel the same way she’d felt the first day they’d met, when he was standing in the hallway outside of Jane’s lab.  Like she wanted to hide somewhere until he went away.  It wasn’t because he was beautiful, because everyone she knew was beautiful these days and she didn’t want to duck under a desk when Thor looked at her.

Darcy couldn’t put her finger on what it was, until he walked her home that night and she realized that they were holding hands-- and she had no idea how long they’d been doing it.

Bucky… snuck up on her, in a way that Steve didn’t.  He was so conscious of their contact that Darcy was always aware of it when they touched.  It was brief and respectful, if it happened at all.  

Bucky was too comfortable touching her-- she forgot that there was anything unusual about it.  (Before she knew it, he’d have her pinned to the carpet, licking the side of her face again.)

Their fingers were intertwined, his thumb tracing back and forth over her skin.  Darcy wanted it to feel invasive, but just like everything else he did, she liked it.  Bucky usually offered her his arm, which was distant and gentlemanly enough that she didn’t find it threatening.  Had he stopped doing that, and just grabbed her hand?  Had  _she_ initiated it?  Was this the first time?

She had the urge to snatch her hand away, but that would only draw attention to her sudden self consciousness.  She really couldn’t remember when she had taken his hand.  If she had ghosted her fingers down his arm and slid her fingers in between his last week, or if this was the first time.

 _I’ve held Jane’s hand,_ Darcy rationalized, deliberately ignoring her nervousness.   _This is a very normal thing we are doing right now._

His palm was warm, and the rough pad of his thumb left a strange sensation in its wake as it ran across the back of her hand, as if her skin were oversensitive.   _So normal.  Could not be more normal.  Very average friend stuff, this stuff right here._

“Hang on, something’s in your hair,”  Bucky said, stopping to pull something out of a lock of hair near her face.

Darcy made an annoyed noise, because it  _should_ be annoying.

“Gotta say, I thought the punk was just making excuses to touch you before with the whole ‘static’ thing.  I mean,”  He passed his fingers gently through her hair, snagging on a few tangles,  “I don’t really need to be doing this right now.  Probably making it worse.”

“So, why are you doing it then?”  Darcy asked, still holding still for him, her voice satisfactorily steady.

He smiled on one side of his mouth.  “Just told you.  Making excuses to touch you.”

Darcy froze, a stab of panic in her chest.  This was the moment, then.  When he would kiss her, and she’d have to start avoiding him.

Kissing was something Darcy did when it was situationally appropriate.  A thing you did on New Year’s Eve, like drinking a glass of champagne.  She’d kissed Ian because it felt like what you should do, after someone saved your life.  

And maybe, Darcy had hoped that if she kept going, she might feel some of the things you were supposed to feel.  Breathless and giddy.  All Darcy had felt was the mundane sensations of their mouths moving together.  It hadn’t been unpleasant-- it had just been nothing.

Bucky glanced at her mouth, but didn’t do anything more than run his fingers through her hair again.

Darcy frowned, studying his face.  Not sure what she was looking for.

He raised his eyebrows questioningly, pausing with his hands on either side of her head.  She shook her head, unable to find the words for what she wanted to say.  

Bucky gave her a long stare, then shrugged lightly to himself and leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”  He promised, and then just… walked away.

She hadn’t wanted him to kiss her.  It didn’t make any sense to be disappointed.

 

Steve wasn’t waiting up for Bucky.  He was more than capable of taking care of himself, and Steve certainly wouldn’t stay up to see what time he came home for any reason other than concern.  

“I’m not jealous.”  He told the wall, letting his head hang off the edge of the bed.  “It’s good that he’s making friends.  He’s always been real sociable.  I’m glad.”

Steve did not look at the clock to check the time again.

“He’s my best pal.”  He insisted, feeling a headache start from all the blood pooling in his head.  “And Darcy is not my girlfriend.”

The wall stared back at him blankly, as if unconvinced.


	11. Chapter 11

The morning routine was one of the few things that hadn’t changed about Bucky over the years.  

Sure, the Bucky’ before’ had left his sheets and blankets balled up at the foot of his bed, and the Bucky ‘after’ made it with tight hospital corners-- but breakfast was exactly the same.  He’d wander into the kitchen and eat whatever was set in front of him in silence, shoveling the scrambled eggs into his mouth in sleepy resentment.  

He’d never been a willing early riser.  Steve remembered a time when it had bothered him, how surly Bucky was in the mornings.   He’d barely talk, and take his coffee back to bed after he was finished eating so he could lay down a little longer.  It used to infuriate him, but now he found it comforting.  There were parts of the Bucky he’d known before the war that were never coming back-- just like there were parts of Steve himself that would never be the same, bigger things than the size of his body-- but these things remained.  

When Bucky walked into the kitchen and dumped half the sugar container into his coffee, Steve’s heart sank, because  _that_ was familiar too.

He tried to smile, putting a plate of eggs and toast in front of him.  Bucky made a grunt intended to communicate thanks and began to eat in the mechanical manner of a man barely conscious.

“Didn’t sleep well?”  Steve asked, stirring more brown sugar into his oatmeal, trying to be nonchalant, but he already knew.  Bucky had taken a lot of girls out for a good time, but when he was serious, this was how it started.  He’d take a girl out, and then the next day, he’d be exhausted.  He’d told Steve before that it was because his brain was buzzing-- that he just couldn’t sleep until he thought things through.

Pretty soon, Darcy would tell him that they didn’t need to fake date anymore, because she had a  _real_ boyfriend-- but at least he’d still get to see her.  They’d still be friends.  

Not that Steve didn’t have friends.  He had a lot of friends, but… most of them could be more accurately referred to as ‘allies’.  They weren’t really the kind of people he invited over for movie night.

Maybe Sam.  

He felt a sweeping sense of isolation, still.  But it would pass, and then he would be happy for them, because if  _he_ was lonely, at least he had other friends.  Bucky only had him, as far as he could tell.  Darcy was the first person, male or female, he’d shown any interest in since he’d come back.

_Bucky with his feet on the table the other night, saying “I’d make out with me” in that casual tone, like it was a perfectly natural thing to admit, like he thought about making out with guys all the time._

Steve inhaled his oatmeal and choked until Bucky clapped him on the back, his vision suddenly sharp and aware.

“You okay, pal?”  He said, and his hand was still resting on Steve’s back, stroking it a little absently in his concern.  

Steve swallowed and nodded, eyes damp from coughing, too aware that Bucky had used his right arm to touch him, and the fingers were warm against his skin.

He took a deep, slow breath, trying to slow the speed of his heart beat under Bucky’s hand, and smiled to show he was okay, gesturing down at his bowl wryly.  “Turns out you can’t breathe this stuff.  Doesn’t say that on any of the packaging-- I may have to sue.”

Bucky snorted, giving him another one of those sharp looks.  Sometimes Steve felt the faint but real fear that Bucky could read his mind-- that one day he’d just look at him across the dinner table and say, ‘I know what you think about me sometimes’.

Mostly, he tried not to think about it.  

It was part of what had made Peggy confusing.  There had been little things, like the way he found the smell of her perfume distracting… that should have been simple.  He was attracted to her.  He liked her.

But he’d always liked Bucky’s aftershave.  Liked the way it smelled, but didn’t want to smell like that himself, because then it would be the way  _he_ smelled, instead of the way Bucky smelled.

They were too similar-- those feelings.  Steve had always liked women, thought they were pretty, that sort of thing, but it had also always felt like they might be some whole other type of person.  He didn’t know how to interact with them until Peggy, because Peggy wasn’t a ‘dame’, she was an Agent.  

That’s when it had started, really, the liking her.  When it had made sense to him, in a way it hadn’t before, that women were just other people.  Not that he hadn’t thought they were  _people_ … but he’d thought there were rules, different ways women were supposed to be and men were supposed to be.

And if there weren’t any rules, then maybe it meant something, that he liked that aftershave smell like he liked Peggy’s perfume.

It was a lot to think about, so he just… hadn’t.  They were in the middle of a war, and there were so many other things to think about.  Being cold and wet, Hydra, learning to speak French.  The people he’d killed, the people he’d saved, the people in the worst towns, near the camps, who’d  _known_ there was something going on but hadn’t done anything, hadn’t wanted to look at it.  Hadn’t wanted to think about it.

Then Bucky had fallen from the train, and he’d realized that he was just like them.  He hadn’t wanted to see it.  Because Bucky hadn’t been alright since before they found him in that camp, hadn’t been charming and dapper and ready to talk to everyone-- he had been quiet, and messy, and drunk.  He’d wanted to go  _home,_ but he’d stayed because he always stayed when he thought Steve needed him.  

If he had gone home, Bucky would have gone with him, and they would be sitting on their fire escape in Brooklyn peeling the labels from beer bottles and flicking them into the alley.  The only reason they weren’t was that Steve wanted to be something more than a dancing monkey.  Wanted to be that guy they’d made him in the pictures, instead of the guy reading his lines off a wooden shield and pretending to punch Hitler.

He’d killed his best friend because he had something to prove.  Because he wanted some white picket fence fantasy future with Peggy Carter, like the end of a movie, instead of their beautiful dirty little life.  

Maybe he’d thought about that, when he’d taken the plane down, Peggy begging him not to do this.  That apartment back in Brooklyn, with just him in it, the dishes that would stay in the sink until he washed them.  The air that would only ever smell like him.  The stillness.

Or even worse, that apartment with someone else in it who wasn't Bucky.

The modern world had a lot of miracles in it, but none of them compared to the sound of Bucky complaining when he saw the pan soaking in the sink, tell him for the thousandth time that if he’d just turn the damn heat down, the eggs wouldn’t burn onto the bottom like that.

 _I will never make that mistake again,_ he vowed.   _I will never think that this is not enough._

He would be happy for them, when Darcy told him they were going to date for real.  He knew he could be, as long as he could keep this.  


	12. Chapter 12

Steve could hear the sounds of inhabitation when he entered the apartment-- a faint clinking in the kitchen and cheerful, repetitive music playing low in the living room.  It was something that reminded him of a calliope, fading out and then restarting at the beginning.   _Dvd menu,_ Steve thought, hanging his keys on the hook by the door as loudly as possible.  There was none of the usual bickering, Darcy and Bucky’s voices creeping incrementally louder until they were almost shouting at eachother-- just the looping of that music-- and his mind immediately flashed to Bucky tickling Darcy on the floor.

He tapped his knuckles against the door frame before he walked into the living room, steeling himself.

Darcy was curled up asleep on the sofa, hands tucked underneath her cheek in lieu of a pillow with her hair falling into her face.  She had a blanket draped over her, but there was nothing supporting her head.      

He’d tucked his jacket under her head and was tracing a finger over one of the curls around her face when he realized what he was doing.  

It was like the other night, pulling invisible pieces of paper from her hair, an excuse.

 _This is going to be Bucky’s girl,_ he reminded himself, but he stayed where he was, crouched by the couch with one hand hovering near her cheek.  

He hadn’t really wanted Darcy to be his girl.  He’d wanted… something not quite that.  To hold her hand, and have her bare feet touch his when they watched movies, but to not have anything change.  

 

Bucky was in the kitchen, scooping vanilla ice cream into a glass with his back to the door.  Steve watched the muscles of his back moving as he worked his wrist into the carton, spoon bending from the pressure.  There was a long white drip running down his forearm, pooling in his elbow, and the thought of licking it off flashed through Steve’s mind as intense as a memory.  Warm skin against his tongue, sweet and salty, his hand wrapped around Bucky’s arm to hold it still-- like something he’d already done.

Steve sat at the counter, and his best friend made him a root beer float.  He ate it trying not to think about that sticky line of ice cream, and forgot to ask why Darcy was sleeping on the couch, or when she was leaving.  

 

It happened that she wasn’t.

“Thanks for doing this.”  She yawned, shifting her shoulders back against one of the pillows Bucky had piled around her.  “If I oversleep for Jane’s weird late night data aggregation party one more time...”

“I’ll wake you up at one.”  Bucky promised, stretching his arms over his head.  He was already dressed for bed, the soft waist of his pajama pants riding low on his hips, and the gesture pushed his shirt up.  Steve saw Darcy glanced at the stripe of skin and then away, pulling her blankets up a little higher.  Buried under the covers with only her head sticking out, she was close to disappearing, and he felt like leaning over and grabbing her hand.   _It’s alright to look.  He likes you, he wants you to._

It was in every movement he made, leaning over Darcy’s body to tuck the pillows behind her-- so she could smell him, if she wanted to.  Putting his hands behind his head to expose the bottom of his abs, so she could look.  That was always Bucky’s way, when he was courting-- he was always inviting, but never pushy.  He just… gave opportunities.

Bucky smiled at both of them, reaching out to brush a touch over Steve’s shoulder on his way out the door, warm and lingering.

Like an echo, he felt Bucky’s hand rubbing his back during breakfast.  Thought of the way he’d insisted they use the fancy glasses they kept in the high shelves over the kitchen, so Bucky could stretch up to get them down and show the dimples of the back of his hip bones.

So Steve could look, if he wanted to.  

 

“Steve?”  Darcy ventured, beginning to be concerned by the way he had just frozen with that blank look on his face.  “Are you alright?”

He turned his face towards her and blinked, as if his eyes were having trouble focusing.  “Yes,”  He said, his voice slow.  “Fine.  I’m fine.”

“Steve… Shit.” Darcy tried to sit up and slipped sideways on the duvet underneath her.  When she was halfway off the couch she made the executive decision to just go with it, sliding onto the carpet, half of her blanketed legs landing in Steve’s lap.  

If his strange tone of voice hadn’t been enough cause for concern, the way he patted her legs would have raised Darcy’s eyebrows.  It was absentminded, affectionate-- nothing she didn’t like.  It just wasn’t Steve.  He didn’t even ask if she was okay, just smiled and pushed a hand through his hair in a way that left it sticking up.

Darcy hesitated, but there was something about his dazed expression that made her think it would be alright to brush it back into order with her fingers.  His hair was incredibly soft, like touching a ruff of ermine, and Darcy found herself doing more than fixing his hair.  He closed his eyes under the scratch of her fingers over his scalp, turning into it-- and  _that_ was even less like Steve.  

“I don’t want…”  He paused, licking his lips,  “Anything to change.”

He shook his head, and Darcy pulled her hand back.

“That’s okay, Steve.”  Darcy promised, letting him have her blanket and crawling back onto the couch.  The duvet she’d slipped on was still there, if in some disarray, and she rolled herself up in it, turning her back to the room.


	13. Chapter 13

The thing Darcy had missed most in New Mexico was winter.  The desert got cold at night, but it wasn’t winter--It didn’t have the stillness she loved, or the sharp smell of frost.

It wasn’t winter yet, but it was on the cusp.  Cold enough that their breaths were white in the air, windy enough to whip Darcy’s hair up into a tangle above her head.  

It wasn’t the being cold that she liked-- it was the feeling that came after, when she got warm again.  It felt safe.  

The wind cut into her clothing and she shivered, squeezing Bucky’s hand tight enough that it might have hurt someone else.

A few blocks from the tower Darcy looked around, then opened her mouth.  The streets had that late night feeling even though they weren’t the only ones out walking, like you needed to whisper if you wanted to tell a secret.  “Are we friends?”

Bucky raised his eyebrows and paused, waiting for her to elaborate.

“It always happens to me.”  Darcy tried to explain, feeling like she was talking too loud and too fast.  “I try to make friends with someone, and they’re like, ‘Let’s see a movie’, and I’m like ‘Yay, new friend!’.  But, they’re not.”

She licked her lips and felt her wet lips freeze a little.  “Steve really wanted to watch a movie, though.”

Bucky smiled, just with one side of his mouth, and ran a thumb over the back of her hand.  “Yeah,”  He agreed, his voice quiet  “Steve’s a good friend.”

Darcy nodded, and lifted their hands up as an example.  “But are  _we_ friends?”

“We’re whatever you want us to be.”  He blew a breath over their hands for warmth, and Darcy found her eyes drawn to the shape his mouth made.

 _That’s not an answer.  I don’t know what I want us to be._ Darcy thought, taking a deep breath to try and push down the sick feeling that was crawling up her throat.  In the back of her mind there was a montage playing, every time she’d rejected a guy and he’d gotten nasty about it.  Changing rooms in the dorms because her roommate's boyfriend had said she’d come onto him.  Changing her major.

Moving to New Mexico, so she could be warm all the time, because that at least was a change.

She opened her mouth and then closed it again, suddenly in sympathy with Steve’s ‘ _I don’t want anything to change.’_

“I’m--”  She bit back her denial. “I don’t want things to get fucked up.  I want...” Steve’s soft hair, turning into her hand and then shaking his head, flashed through Darcy’s mind.  “Just-- are we friends?”

Bucky gave her a long look, pushing her hair back from her face, and Darcy had the urge to run inside.  Hit the call button, ride the elevator down to Jane’s lab with her hair still a wreck.  Get away from the way the wind was working its way into her clothing, making her shake.  

“We’re friends.”  He promised, his hands against her face the only point of warmth on her body.  

And then they were kissing, with her arms thrown around his neck.  She’d pulled him down into her, the way she had with Ian, but this was... what it was supposed to be.  What she thought it was supposed to be, her heart beating so hard she thought she could hear it rushing in her ears.  

His tongue was licking into her mouth, and her fingers were gripping the back of his neck, and it felt terrifying.

 

Thor was way too cheerful for three o’clock in the morning, kissing the side of Jane’s face while she stared at her screen.  He’d already made Darcy a cup of coffee, ruffled her hair affectionately,  _and_  brought her a well toasted chocolate poptart that she found both disgusting and irresistible.

It was grounding to be in the lab.  This was her domain, where nothing was confusing.  

Aggregating data was usually one of Darcy’s least favorite activities.  It was repetitive, and Jane always wanted them to do it in the middle of the night for reasons she had explained to Darcy that Darcy hadn’t really been listening to.  But tonight she was finding it oddly soothing, putting everything into order.  

She was taking another bite of her poptart and trying to focus on the too sweet, dry taste, when Thor set a big hand on on her head, pushing her face a few inches from her screen in his enthusiasm.  

He rubbed her hair until she could feel it start to stick up from the static electricity, beaming down at her.

Darcy was suddenly struck with the mortifying thought that, somehow, Thor knew.  That she smelled freshly kissed.

 _Is he rubbing my hair for luck?_ She wondered, trying to duck away from his hand.   _What is with this weird hair thing?_

When he stopped touching her head, Darcy set her hands on the desk and was immediately shocked.  

“A fine omen!”  He boomed, leaning over the back of her chair to plant a kiss on her forehead.

 

Just like everything Thor did to her, the hair thing lasted too long and seemed to have weird side effects.  Darcy didn't go into work again until noon, but still managed to destroy three pieces of lab equipment just by touching them.

Jane sighed, standing over the smoking remains of whatever that flat machine on the counter that looked like a waffle iron was.

“This is your fault.”  Darcy informed her, shaking her watch to see if she could make it work again.  “You’re the one who hit that guy with the van.  Twice.  And then took him home from the hospital.  You did this.”

“ _You_  hit him--”  Jane started to argue, and then shook her head.  “No.  You’re right.”

“I am.”  Darcy agreed, reaching for her iPod before reconsidering. “I am going home now, before the trail of electronic carnage increases.”

“Please do.”  Jane murmured, one hand jammed into her hair in agitation.  The waffle maker thing was apparently of vital importance.


	14. Chapter 14

Movie night with Steve should have been a refreshing oasis after stumbling through the confusing desert that was whatever was going on with Bucky.  

She knew exactly what to expect, and that was relaxing.  They’d eat popcorn, and shitty candy, and she’d talk at the movie while he laughed at her.  There would be no hand holding, or face touching, or kissing.

That’s what she was thinking, right before she touched the remote and the television stopped working.

“JARVIS, can you turn the TV back on?”  Steve asked, pressing the power button with a frown, but Darcy had heard it break-- a sad sound, like a mason jar smashing from a distance.

“I’m sorry, Captain Rogers.”  JARVIS said, a faint note of confusion in his voice.  “It appears I am unable to comply with that request.”

“It’s my fault,”  Darcy said, feeling her hair cling to her skin when she ran a frustrated hand over it.  “I’ve been breaking shit all day… I should just go to bed.”

She closed her eyes and sighed, the too-sweet taste of a Junior Mint still coating the roof of her mouth.  She would just go back to her room and… well, not go on the computer.  Stare at the wall, maybe, and freak out some more.

She almost jumped out of her skin when Steve touched her hand.  “Hey.  Are you okay?”  He asked, giving her the same concerned look he’d turned on the remote control a moment earlier.  “You seem…”  He gestured at his own face, like he couldn’t find the word.  “Like you were thinking about something, and then you got sad.”

 _What are you doing, face?_  Darcy admonished herself, plastering on a smile, but it only seemed to deepen Steve’s frown.

“You know you can talk to me.”  He told her seriously, squeezing her fingers for reassurance.  “About-- Bucky.  Or anything.”

“Okay, no, why did you immediately assume… What did he say?”  Darcy wanted to snatch her hand back, not liking the sympathy in Steve’s gesture.  The way it spoke to her needing to be comforted.

“He didn’t say anything.”  Steve assured her, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand in a way that was startlingly familiar.  “I told you, Bucky doesn’t-- wouldn’t-- talk about that kind of thing.”

Kissing Bucky on the sidewalk outside of the tower while the cold cut into her clothes flashed through her mind, and Darcy buried her face in her hands.  It mortified her to think about it, like it was possible for Steve to just look at her and _know_.  “I, god, I can’t.  Like, I literally can’t.”  Why did I…?”

Steve waited for her to finish at least one complete thought, but she seemed comfortable with her face covered, shaking her head in response to something she’d thought.  “Darcy… I don’t really know what you’re talking about.”  He admitted.  “But I know that he likes you.”

“I’m freaking out.”  Darcy moaned into her palms.  “I don’t… He’s always so… with touching.  And the lip thing.  And the mrphumph.”

Steve lost the ability to interpret her mutterings towards the end, but he knew exactly when she meant about the lip thing.   “Yeah, he… yeah.”  He rubbed at the the stiff muscle in her shoulder sympathetically.  “I know, it’s hard.  Do you want to go get ice cream?  Would that make you feel better?”

She pulled her face from her fingers and stared at him, until Steve began to worry he’d really upset her with the suggestion.  “It’s always what makes me feel better.  Ice cream.”  

“...Yeah.”  Darcy said, still giving him that long examining look.  Then she smiled.  “Okay, Steve.  Let’s go get ice cream.”

 

He got back home late with sticky hands and the sense that he had missed something.  Darcy had seemed to have fun-- laughed, licked melted chocolate off of her arms-- but there was something in the way she’d kept tilting her head at him that had made him feel self conscious.

It was quiet in the house, his keys clinking in the bowl by the door so loud he almost expected to hear it echo.  He was used to hearing Bucky when he walked in the door, the television droning on the the living room or the sound of cooking in the kitchen, but the apartment was still.

 _He must have gone to bed_ , Steve reasoned.  This was what it would be like when he and Darcy started dating, he supposed.  They’d stay over at her place sometimes-- trying to be considerate, of course, because they’d want to…

There wasn’t any way to tell them he wouldn’t mind that.  Not that he wanted to listen in, but if it kept them here, he wouldn’t mind.

“Hey, stop being all sad and shit in the hallway.”  Bucky called from his bedroom, and Steve twitched, found himself still standing in the foyer.

Bucky’d left the door to his room open, but Steve didn’t go beyond the frame.  Now that he’d finally noticed that Bucky was being inviting, it was hard not to give the things he was asking for.  He pulled his hair up off his neck, and all Steve could see was a place Bucky wanted him to press his lips.   _The back of my neck is available to be kissed_ , the gesture now proclaimed.  He rested his head on Steve’s shoulder dramatically in jest, and Steve could practically hear Bucky willing him to turn his face into him to smell his cologne.

“You smell like ice cream.”  Bucky stated, not looking up from his book, a small strip of muscle showing in the space between where his shirt ended and the pool of blankets at his waist began.   _Crawl into bed with me_ ,  his body language whispered, _my sheets are soft._  “And ice cream is your sad food.”

“Ice cream is my happy food.”  Steve corrected, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet with his hands holding the top of the doorframe.  “Darcy... broke the TV.  Somehow.  So.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows, but didn’t ask about the television, just turned another page.  Steve could picture it so easily, what it could be like to come home to him and curl up against his chest.  Talking about his day while Bucky pretended not to pay attention.

Bucky always actually listened to him, but was just easier for Steve to talk like that, sometimes, if he imagined he was talking only to himself.

“I’m going to bed.”  He announced a little too loudly, and Bucky finally looked up, sliding something in between the pages and setting his book on the nightstand.

“Catch the light for me, would you pal?”  He asked, shifting lower on the bed and turning on his side towards the empty right half of the bed, his body curved in a shape it would be easy for Steve to fit himself into.

He got the light, but Bucky didn’t ask him to close the door, so Steve left it.  It was nice to think the invitation was still open, even if he wasn’t planning to walk through it.


	15. Chapter 15

Darcy had never thought of herself as being reliant on technology-- not the way Tony was, with his whole codependent AI butler/nanny situation-- but she had to admit that she was at loose ends without her computer.  On any other morning, waking up at 5 am would be an annoyance, but she would have made it work for her with Youtube videos of cats falling off of things, then trying to look nonchalant about it afterwards.

Now, all she could do was  _think._

Think about Steve rubbing her hand sympathetically, and Bucky making them root beer floats.  

Think about Steve, in his button up shirts, always on time.

Darcy had been laying with her head hanging over the seat of one of the armchairs in the living room for a half hour when Natasha walked in and gave her a skeptical stare.

Darcy imaged she made quite a picture, in her oversized Hello Kitty sweater and pink velour sweat pants, the heads of her puppy slippers nodding as she wiggled her feet.

Natasha looked less intimidating upside down, somehow.  “Hey Nat.”  She greeted, flapping a hand.  

After a long minute of silence in which no explanation was forthcoming, Natasha lowered herself to asking.  “It's six in the morning.  What are you doing?”

Darcy shrugged, the gesture shifting her a foot closer to the floor.  “I am trying to see things from a new perspective.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow, amused.  “Is it helping?”

“No,”  Darcy admitted,  “But I’m committed, regardless.”

“Do you want to… talk about it?”  Natasha offered, pronouncing the second half of the sentence as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.

“Why?”  Darcy asked, then shook her head,  “I mean, why would you want to talk about it with me?”

Natasha tilted her head, running through the replies she thought Darcy might accept.  “I’ve being trying to set Steve up for a while.”  She decided, settling onto the couch.  “I’m invested now.”

Darcy raised her eyebrows towards the floor, the skin of her forehead flushed red where the blood was pooling in her head.  “Yeah…. I don’t buy that.”  She muttered, then decided to go all in.  “I mean, if you wanted to do that, why not just-- you know.  Bucky.”

Natasha’s utterly unsurprised face was all the confirmation Darcy needed that she’d been right.  “Why not just ‘Bucky’?”  Natasha repeated, just to make Darcy  _say_ it.

She rolled her eyes, but clarified.  “Why not just set Steve up with Bucky?  I mean, there’ve been  _books_ written about how sexy he is, and they both obviously want to… Why try to drag anyone else into it?”   _Why drag_ _me_ _into it?_

Natasha raised her eyebrows.  “Darcy… Did you ever read any of those books?”

“Noooo…”  Darcy admitted, dragging the word out.  “It seemed kind of weird to.  Personal.”

“Hmm.  We shall have to correct that.”  Natasha hummed to herself, then smiled her slow cheshire cat smile.  “In that case… Did you know that Bucky and I used to date?”

There was no verbal response that was adequate to that, but Darcy was sure her horrified expression spoke volumes, because Natasha laughed.

“Let me tell you about it.”  She offered, still smiling too wide.

 

If he’d known who was at the door, Bucky might have put a little more effort into his appearence, but there were worse ways for Darcy to see him than a little sleep rumpled.

“Hey Darce,”  He said, pulling his hair up into a ponytail, and watched her eyes trace the line of the muscles in his arm.   _This should not be so hard,_ he reflected with an internal sigh.  “Little early?”

“I-- broke my phone.  Can we talk?  It doesn’t have to be now, obviously.”  Darcy said, trying to smile, and Bucky frowned.  Her body language was off, hands twisted together-- it wasn’t like her usual awkwardness.

“Now’s fine.”  He said, drawing a hand over her shoulders as she walked through the door.  They were a mass of tension he wished he could dig his fingers into.  

 _If you would just let me, I could make you feel better,_ he promised her silently, watching her tuck her feet underneath herself on the couch.  In lieu of that, he settled for handing her his coffee.

Darcy rubbed her hands against the warm ceramic of the mug, comforted to have something to occupy her hands.  “Thank you.”  She said, taking a deep swallow.  It was lukewarm, thick with honey and cinnamon and milk, not what she would have expected him to drink before she met him.  He looked like he should be all black coffee and cigarettes, leather jackets, when really he was…

“I read your books.”  She blurted, then winced.  “I mean, the ones about you.”

“I was wondering when one of you would get around to that.”  Bucky murmured, stretched his legs out to rest on the coffee table in studied nonchalance, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck.  “So…”

“And I talked to Natasha.” She added, and took a deep breath, trying to steady herself.  “And she said… um.  That they were pretty accurate.  The books.”

Bucky shrugged, still rubbing at his neck, the long ends of his hair wrapping around his wrist.  “Yeah.  I mean, I don’t know about the parts I wasn’t in, but yeah.”

Darcy nodded to herself for too long, looking down into her coffee cup at where the oil from the milk fat sat on the surface in shining drops.  “Okay.  Okay.  Um.  Do you still--”

“Yes.”  Bucky cut in, making eye contact with her in a way that was steady enough to almost feel aggressive.  “I still love Steve.  And yes, I still think we both need more than that.  If we’re going to be happy.”

“Natasha said…”  Darcy licked her lip, trying to find the words she wanted.  “That it’s hard, to be someone’s partner, and date.  That it gets too intense.”

Bucky rubbed his feet together on the table, a thinking tick she’d never noticed before.  “Working with someone, the kind of work we do-- it’s intense, no matter what.  But me and Steve…”  He smiled, like he was remembering something, and Darcy was reminded of how much history they had between them.  How many things Steve and Bucky must have seen together.  “We’ve always been good together, that way.  I think we could do it, but there’s gonna be times when it’s been a bad one for both of us.  We need…”  He pulled a face and trailed off, dropping his hands into his lap after holding them up uselessly.  “We need more than each other.”

“So, do you want me--”  Darcy started, and her voice sounded wrong.  Too high, like something was stuck in her throat.

“I want you.”  He confirmed, like she hadn’t stopped in the middle of what she was saying, and that was the question she had meant to ask.  Maybe it was.


	16. Chapter 16

Steve was never one to begrudge anyone else happiness, but there was something about Natasha’s cat-that-got-the-cream smile that morning that was beginning to unnerve him.  

It wasn’t just that she looked self-satisfied-- it was that she kept staring at him whenever his phone dinged, with the intense focus of a predator waiting for just the right moment to pounce on something small and innocent it wanted to kill.

Of course, no one ever texted Steve but Tony and Darcy, and Darcy was still (he assumed) having technical issues.  His phone should have been relatively silent.

Unfortunately, Tony was feeling chatty.

Although nowhere to be seen, he kept up a running commentary.   _What did you do to get Nat to put her murder face on?_  Was quickly followed by,  _Oh my god she looks like she wants to eat you,_ and  _I want to help you, Cap, I do, but I’m afraid.  DON’T MAKE ME CHOOSE._

Steve rolled his eyes at the first two, and turned his phone off for the rest of the day at the third.

This method soon proved to be inadequate to Tony’s ingenuity.  Steve unfolded the napkin Bucky had wrapped around his sandwich at noon to find a note with his messy scrawl tucked inside, the text slightly disfigured by mustard.   _I cannot believe you have reduced me to sending you notes.  On paper.  Like a middle school girl.  Do you like me, circle one: Yes No Maybe._

The ‘Yes’ had been pre-circled.

“Leave me alone, Tony.”  Steve said aloud, certain he was being watched or that he could at the very least expect JARVIS to relay his message.  “I’m not sure what’s going on with Natasha, but I  _am_ sure that you’re going to make it worse if you keep poking at it.”

“I really can’t stop myself, Capsicle.”  Tony’s voice boomed from the ceiling promptly.  “It’s like a missing tooth or something, I want to leave it alone, but I can’t keep my tongue from wandering back over.”

He paused, apparently to adjust the volume, because his voice became softer going forward.  “Look, I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s a section of security footage missing from my system, from six in the morning until about seven.  Right before that, Darcy was in the living room, and Natasha looked like she was heading that way.”

Steve paused in mid-chew, a heaviness settling in his stomach that had nothing to with the turkey sandwich in his hand.  He swallowed with some difficulty.

“Is--”  He coughed, trying to get his voice to sound normal.  “Do you know where Darcy is?  Is she still in the building?  I’d call, but--”

“Yeah, Thor’s mojo.”  Tony agreed, the face he was making almost visable to Steve.  “She’s not here.  Took off around nine, hasn’t been back.”

Even as he set his lunch down on the table, Steve knew it was ridiculous to run back home in the middle of the day, on the chance that Darcy was there, but there was a panic creeping up his throat that he was hard-pressed to justify.

He trusted Natasha not to do anything malicious, in spite of the game they’d been playing.  It wasn’t that.

It was that he could see Bucky answering the door in his soft sleep clothes, Darcy uncertain and anxious… he wouldn’t leave her that way, of course.  Bucky always knew how to soothe a dame.

It would be all over, by the time he got there.  There was no reason for him to hurry.  He’d already been left behind.

He took the stairs two at a time, all the same.

 

When Steve walked in he could hear soft voices in the living room, Bucky’s low tones rising and falling calmly.  He wasn’t surprised to find them on the couch together, Darcy’s head in Bucky’s lap while he drew a hand through her hair.  Little bursts of static ran over his hand as he drew the waves straight, like tiny bolts of lightning.

 _I am happy for them._ Steve reminded himself.  He  _was_ , really, happy that Bucky had found someone to connect to.  That Darcy had someone she could feel safe with.

Still, he backed out of sight to rest his back against the wall, afraid of what might be showing on his face.

“I just don’t know what you’re expecting.”  Darcy was saying, her voice soft,  “I mean, I don’t know if I’m going to want to…”

“I’m not expecting anything.”  Bucky promised.  The space in his bed that he’d left open for him the night before flashed through Steve’s mind, and it was all he could do not to double over, the what could have been like a blow to the stomach.  “I don’t want anything you don’t want.”

“But what if I don’t  _ever_ \--”  Darcy protested, and was cut off by something that muffled her words, like he’d pressed a hand over her mouth.

“ Don’t."  Bucky interrupted bluntly.  "Sex is not an obligation.  It’s not something you’d… owe me.”  The disgust he injected into the words was palpable.  “Or Steve.”

 _Or Steve?_   Steve repeated mentally in confusion, a strange shiver of something he couldn’t identify creeping up his back.  

“Steve…”  Darcy agreed, then sighed.  “You really think he’d want… you know.  That?”

Bucky made an odd noise, something between a laugh and a groan.  “I think the gulf between what Steve wants, and what Steve will admit to wanting, is wider than the Grand fucking Canyon.  But, yeah.  I think he does.”

His voice went soft at the end, gentle as the hand that Steve knew he was still running through Darcy’s hair on the other side of the wall, and Steve heard a rushing sound in his ears.

He sat down right there in the hallway.


	17. Chapter 17

They talked about everything while Bucky ran his hands through her hair like she was a horse he was afraid of spooking.  Natasha and the books, and Steve.  

Mostly Steve.

It was hard to extricate herself from Bucky, and the couch in general.  Her hair seemed determined to cling to his fingers with all the force its static could muster, and Bucky was being comfortable, dragging his nails lightly along her scalp, until she wanted to curl up and fall asleep-- but she’d been up since five, and her face felt oily.

She left Bucky on the couch, his arms tucked behind his head, and stepped into the empty hall.  The shine of the lights on the wood caught on the smudges her feet had left, and Darcy looked down at her mismatched socks, feeling too warm and self-conscious.  The distance between the living room and the bathroom in the front hall had never felt so huge.   Darcy shut the door with her entire body, and turned the water on, dipping her hand into the flow to flick droplets over her face, feeling calmed by the orderliness of the clean white tile and the presence of a closed door.

Darcy was staring at herself in the mirror with her eyes unfocused, thinking about how warm the room felt in comparison with the rest of the apartment, when something moved in the towel cabinet.  It’s a sock she recognizes, white with little ducks-- Steve’s foot, drawing back into the black interior of a cabinet in his own bathroom.

 _He heard us,_ She thought, and immediately accepted it as fact without any more proof than his hiding.

She would have hidden from that too.  (She  _was_ hiding from that.)

Darcy leaned against the sink and ran a hand over her forehead, the skin damp under her bangs, and sighed.  “I hate being hot.”  She announced to the empty room.  In the mirror, something in the cabinet shifted-- not a quick jerk of surprise, but a slow withdrawal as Steve tried to shrink himself down even smaller.  

It was something Darcy’d seen him do, on the news.  Make himself an impossibly tiny ball behind his shield to hide from dangerous things, like this conversation.  Darcy thought about laying with her head in Bucky’s lap while he stroked her hair, and the way he had looked at her, the warm giddy scary feeling that had shot down her spine, and didn’t blame him at all.

“I’d much rather be cold.”  She continued, daubing a hand towel over her face.  “Being hot… Well, this isn’t an issue you have, but it makes your makeup curdle.  And it feels like I’m the witch in The Wizard of Oz melting, getting more and more hideous.”

Darcy shook her head, and watched herself make the gesture in the mirror.  “Obviously, I know that’s an exaggeration.  I mean, I don’t wear makeup all the time, and it’s not like I think I look disgusting when I’m in my pajamas or something.  It just makes me feel exposed.  Summer is very exposing, all bathing suits and no shoes… I’m not into it.  Being cold feels safe.  Layers and sturdy boots.  Plus, all the other stuff-- snow, ice skating, hot chocolate and coffee...”

Darcy nodded decisively, pulling her hair up to dampen the back of her neck.  “I’m a winter girl.  But you're summer.  Like, the kind of person who would want to go cliff diving or something for the rush.”

“It’s not really the same.”  Steve’s voice came through the cabinet with surprising clarity.  “I’m indestructible.”  Darcy waited for him to drop down and join her, but he didn’t move.  Maybe it was easier to talk that way, in the dark.

“...You’re not indestructible.”  Darcy argued, turning away from the sink to frown at where she knew Steve was.  It seems like a strange response, like he’s answering some question underneath what she’d said.

“If I cut myself, it hurts.”  He agreed,  “But then, in an hour… it disappears.  Like it never happened.”  There was a soft shushing noise, and Darcy identifies it as the sound of fingers running over skin.  She imagined him, in the dark, feeling his arm for a scar that should be there, but wasn’t.  “This doesn’t work like that.”

“ _Ah_.”  Darcy said, and looked down at her own arms, the blue lines of her veins under the skin, and bit her lip. “Yeah.  But not doing anything is also a decision that you can’t take back.  And… I kind of need you.”  She winced at how that sounded.  “Um.  Need your help.”

And that is what it takes to pull him out from hiding, which shouldn’t surprise her, but maybe Steve wasn’t the only one who was enjoying not having to look at the person he was talking to.  When he slides down and he’s standing there in his khakis and a flannel shirt, Darcy finds him oddly intimidating, the way Bucky was the first time she saw him.  Tall and handsome, the kind of guy who would confuse her by being attractive and flirtatious.  But then he looked at her, and put an unthreatening hand on her arm, and he was just Steve again.  More scared of her than she was of him.

“Need my help?”  He prompted, giving her upper arm a light squeeze, looking into her face seriously, but smiling.  Trying to be reassuring, even though two seconds ago he was hiding on a pile of bath towels to avoid her.

Darcy leaned forward to let her face press against his chest, and Steve let go of her arms to wrap her in a hug, making vague pronouncements of sympathy.  His hands run over the back of her T-shirt, and it’s soothing in a way that Bucky touching her never is.  Even when she’s comfortable, sometimes Darcy will come back to herself, and everything that is happening will suddenly feel strange.  Why is she laying there, with this man’s hands in her hair?  Who is this person, holding her hand?

Bucky was like another country.  Exciting, different, something she’d dreamed about-- a place she wanted to go, certainly.  But ultimately, foreign.

Steve was like going into her bedroom and closing the door, and she hid in him, rubbing her face against the cotton of his flannel.  Safe, and familiar.

“I can’t do this without you.”  Darcy muttered into his shirt, and even though there was no change in the pressure of his arms, Darcy felt him stiffen.

“I can’t.”  She insisted, hugging him more determinedly.  “I’m already hiding in the bathroom, Steve.”

Steve pulled in a breath, like he was gearing up for a fight, but he kept stroking her back.  “You’ll be fine.  Bucky won’t push, you know that.”

Darcy made a face that he had to be able to feel.  “He doesn’t have to push, he  _is_ a push, Steve, and don’t act like you don’t know what I mean.”

In answer, Steve rested his chin on her head and sighed like an old sheep dog.


	18. Chapter 18

Sitting up that night with the entire Bucky Barnes collection (as Darcy had phrased it), Steve couldn’t shake a pervasive feeling that he was invading Bucky’s privacy, even though millions of people had read these books already (or watched the movie adaptations and then told people that they’d read them).  

Maybe it was the way that Darcy had given him a slanted smile when she’d handed them over, glancing around the hallway like she was afraid to get caught.

“Natasha says--”  She’d started, then began to mutter.  “You know what, there’s notes, I don’t need to…”  Her voice trailed off, and she’d shoved the books at him without making eye contact again.  Steve had wanted to refuse them, but he remembered her fingers digging into the front of his shirt in the bathroom.   _I can’t do this without you._ And he’d taken them, and locked himself in his room for the rest of the night.

He’d finished them in one sitting, hunched over in his bed with a blanket over his head in case Bucky saw his light was on.   _Like a teenager hiding a porno mag_ , he thought, although porn might almost be less embarrassing.

The first book had been the hardest, mostly because of the pictures.  Bucky, laughing on the steps of the public library with his jacket slung over his arm, face light and open in a way it would never be again.  The two of them on a double date, the back of their heads silhouetted against the round of a ferris wheel.

It hurt to see Bucky so young, but the sting was like his muscles burning after too much exertion, the kind of pain Steve almost wanted to keep feeling.  What it  _said_ … sometimes that just hurt.

There were notes in the margins, in Natasha’s neat hand.  Fact checking, primarily, although there was the occasional personal comment where her penmanship changed to something messier in an unconscious nod to its subjectivity.

These were of some comfort to Steve; there was a distance in Natasha’s wording, as if what she was reading was merely a historical document, subject to the same clear-eyed scrutiny as anything else presented to her as ‘fact’.

But he remembered this girl, Connie, remembered how curious and smart she’d seemed, on that date he’d had with her friend right before he’d finally been able to enlist.  It was too easy to picture it, as if she were sitting crosslegged on the mattress next to him, telling him a story.

The second two were easier, if only because they were less real.  Connie’s writing was open, raw as a diary you never expected anyone to read-- the others were polished, edited, sanitized, with stylized covers in bright yellows and blues and sketches of women in bubble skirts and a square shouldered man.  Just the idea of a woman, and a man, their barest outlines.  They could have been anyone.

Still, he could find something of Bucky in the throwaway details of a pair of shoes he remembered, or her description of his smell.  It was like walking through that Smithsonian exhibit and finding some bits of himself hidden in huge pictures of some man who looked like him.

 

In the morning he sat down at the kitchen table, spread them in front of him like a poker hand, and waited for Bucky.

He felt his heart kick up at the sound of his bare feet padding softly down the hall, even though he wasn’t expecting much of a reaction.  Early morning Bucky was more of a presence than a consciousness, more likely to push the books away from the space around his plate with a grunt than to take note of their contents.

But Bucky walks in wide-eyed, already wearing slacks, coffee cup in hand.  Like he hadn’t slept any more than Steve has.

Bucky nodded in the direction of the table, the bottom half of his face hidden in his mug, and raised his eyebrows.  “Getting around to doing your homework pretty late.”

“Gotta.  You know how Sister Ursula is when you can’t answer.”  Steve found himself rubbing the back of his hand unconsciously, the sting of a ruler as sharp in his memory as the day it had happened.  

Bucky snorted, the fingers on his right hand twitching like he was remembering the same thing, and rounded the table to lean against the edge, completely ignoring the chair pulled out for him.  “Buck.  The books...”  He threw up his hands, not sure where to start, and his fingers brushed against his leg.  It was nothing that hadn’t happened a hundred times before between them, but there was a new consciousness of it in him that made Steve flinch back, blushing.

Bucky stared at him, then choked like there was a laugh caught in his throat.  Turning, he set his coffee mug down on the table behind him with a soft clink, somehow even closer than he had been before when they were facing again.  The warmth of his leg was a bare few inches from Steve's folded hands.

Steve had marked the pages he’d wanted to talk about as he read, and he fumbled for one of them, ignoring his urge to touch Bucky.  “Connie says, here, that you had… that you’d never go out with her on Fridays.”

“Course not.”  Bucky agreed, shifting his weight to lean more comfortably with his palms flat on the table.  “We always went to the pictures on Fridays.”

“But you told Connie it-- that you had a date.”  Steve protested, Bucky’s easy mannerisms putting him on edge.  “On Fridays.  Was that-- was it just so she wouldn’t get too attached, or, because she was dating that other fellow, and you didn’t wanna seem bothered by it--”

“I wasn’t bothered by it.”  Bucky interrupted.  “I don’t usually… mind, that sorta thing.”  He shrugged, and his mouth ticked up.  “Prefer it, actually.”

 Steve searched his face for tension, the little tick he got at the corner of his mouth when he was stressed and trying to press it down, but there was nothing.   _He means this._

“But-- Peggy.”  Steve blurted, then shifted uncomfortably in his chair, not sure how to put into words the animosity he’d always sensed between them.

Bucky grimaced and ran a hand over his eyes.  “Yeah… Sorry about that, pal.  I wasn’t in the best headspace back then, and Peg didn’t seem like she wanted to share.  Thought she was gonna piss a ring around you in that bar… I should have tried harder.”  He kicked one of the legs on Steve’s chair with a bit more force than necessary.  “Think my reputation preceded me a bit there, though.”

“I told her you were charming!”  Steve protested, but he wasn’t able to put much conviction into it, if Bucky’s skeptical eyebrow raise meant anything.

“I was in a bad place.”  Bucky reiterated, and Steve let him redirect the conversation gratefully, cringing at the memory of some of the Bucky stories he’d told Peggy that might have been… less than flattering.  “I was having a real hard time not seeing everyone else as a threat.  Still am.”

Bucky blew out a breath, and Steve felt a lurch in his stomach at the look on his face.  “Darcy’s the first dame you’ve been interested in since I came back.  And I haven’t been exactly ready to date, myself-- can’t expect you to just wait around.  So I thought, ‘I’ll go see her, and make nice’, and I get there, and she looks at me like you used to look at a pretty girl.  Just petrified.”  He grinned, and shook his head.  “And I thought ‘Oh my god, there’s two of them’.”

“Yes.  I was cloned by SHIELD, and they made me into the woman I've always been on the inside.”  Steve agreed in a deadpan voice, mildly resentful at his use of the descriptor 'petrified'.

Bucky continued his soliloquy as if there had been no interruption.  “So I thought, ‘Do Steve a favor, loosen the girl up a little’.  And then, when I started to like her, I thought ‘Well, Steve’s always been a little competitive, it’ll get him to make a move’.”  He snorted.  “Such bullshit.  I just wanted to take her out.”

His hands were still splayed on the the table, and Steve took the closest one, squeezing the metal harder than he would flesh so that Bucky could feel it.  “Then that’s what you should do.  You should be happy.”

Bucky looked at their clasped hands, then pulled them to his mouth. “Not without you.”  He promised, and kissed the back of Steve’s hand.


	19. Chapter 19

It should have been a relief when Darcy discovered that she had access to her electronics again, spending the morning with Bucky apparently having drawn off enough of Thor’s ‘blessing’ that she didn’t automatically short out everything she touched.  She had about a hundred emails and dozens of facebook messages, enough to keep her distracted from real life for  _days._   A cozy little internet bubble she could crawl into, where no one expected anything more emotionally taxing from her than another photo of Thor stuffing his face with pancakes.

But across town, Steve was reading the books, and having The Talk.  It made her sick with sympathy anxiety just imagining it.  She couldn't just abandon him to that.

**All OK?** She texted as soon as her phone powered up, ignoring the near-constant vibration as the last few days' backlog of text messages tried to all come through at once.   **U finish them?**

Steve didn’t really like using the phone, and tended to turn it off for important activities like movies, so it wasn’t unusual for it to take him a few hours to respond to messages.  But he  _did_ always respond, so Darcy tried not to harass the man.   _He could have gone to bed early_ , she reasons when he doesn’t text back that night, expecting to have something waiting for her when she wakes up several hours past Steve’s unreasonable idea of when a human being should start the day.  She’s got a few drunk texts from Ian, a shitload of Facebook messages on her phone, a couple of tumblr asks, and a lot of junk mail to delete-- but nothing from Steve.

By noon she’s run out of reasonable excuses and begun to construct elaborate worst case scenarios in her head.   _Maybe they talked and it went so well they ran away to Vegas to get gay married by an Elvis,_ she postulated while she digitized Jane’s notes and emphatically  _did not_  check her phone every five minutes, or picture the dazed and terrified look on Steve’s face that night she’d slept on their couch so Bucky could be her alarm clock.   _Maybe they talked and Steve was so uncomfortable that he just took off on his bike and he won’t talk to me for the next two weeks, then I’ll get a picture from Arizona and we’ll never speak of The Bucky Situation again._

She breaks over lunch, stress eating half a box of animal crackers heads first before tapping out a few more messages.  

As soon as she sends  **U talk?  Everything OK?** , Darcy starts to panic.  It sounds pushy, but moreover, it sounds like she expects something to be going wrong, which feels like it will  _make_ things go wrong.

**Not that it wouldn’t B, I am OK w/ whatever U want obvs** She added, and  _that_ sounds like she thinks she’s an integral factor in things being okay, instead of being a huge part of what must be going wrong.   **Or not, don’t even think about me, do whatever you want, U deserve 2 B happy**

**I’m sorry**  She tacks on for good measure, and puts the phone down to pick at the rest of her lunch, anticipating another half a day of suspense.

When her phone vibrates a minute later, Darcy’s so startled she almost finds out if her iPhone cover is as waterproof (or in this case, coffee-proof) as its Amazon reviews claimed it to be.  She has to hold it still against the counter to swipe the lock screen open because her hand is shaking enough that her finger can’t make consistent contact with it, which is the only thing that keeps her from dropping it when she sees the photo.  (Several Amazon users have claimed that they dropped their phones from more than three feet without the screens cracking, but there’s no reason Darcy needs to field test that.)

Bucky’s holding the phone at arm’s length overhead, smiling like he thinks he’s smirking charmingly but really, he’s just beaming.   _Which is perfectly understandable_ , Darcy thought dizzily, taking in the details of what is obviously a bed with rumpled pale blue sheets and pillows behind his head.  Sheets that are tangled around Steve, asleep and curled into Bucky’s chest with a faint smile on his lips.

Her phone shook again, and Darcy took a moment to appreciate how much faster Bucky was at texting than Steve, even though that seemed like it might be difficult with the whole metal arm situation.

**We are fine.   Stop freaking out.** He replied succinctly, then seemed to reconsider.   **By we I mean all three of us. WE are fine.**

By the time Darcy had taken another pull of her coffee to fortify herself, her phone had buzzed twice.

**Can we pick you up when you’re off work?**

**Want to take you somewhere.**

Darcy tapped her thumbs against the side of her phone to trick her body into thinking she had already replied, to get the anxiety out of the way before she had to actually compose a response.   **What kind of place?  Clothes?**

By the time she realized what she’d done, it was too late.

**Yes, you will unfortunately need to wear them.**

**Open to alternatives for the second half of the date.**

Darcy wanted to slap the stupid smirk right off of his stupid face.

 

“So… What kind of place are you going to?”  Jane questioned, giving Darcy’s clothing draped room a concerned stare.

Sitting crosslegged on her bed, half-buried in every pair of leggings she owned, Darcy pulled absently at her hair with the glassy emptiness of a recent accident victim.  “I have no idea.   _I have no idea, Jane._   He literally just said ‘clothes’.”

“Well, it must be causal then.”  Jane suggested cautiously, trying to pull three pairs of identical jeans out of Darcy’s hands to eliminate them from the running. “I mean, if it was formal, he would have told you, right?”

“Yeah, I know, but what does casual  _mean,_ Jane?”  Darcy let her take the jeans and shoved the pile of cardigans at the end of the bed with her feet, spilling several onto the floor.  “What does anything mean?  Are words even real?”

“You know who’s really good at this sort of thing…”  Jane trailed off, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

“We are not calling Thor.”  Darcy denied, but she gave Jane’s phone a look of faint longing.  “Thor is part of the problem.  Thor will just make me electrocute myself.  Or them.  Or both of us.  It’ll be the weirdest murder/suicide ever.”

“He’s promised he won’t do that again, I told you, but I actually meant Natasha.”  Jane wiggled her cell, watching Darcy’s face like a hawk for any sign of weakness.  When she found it, she flipped open her prehistoric phone and tapped out a text.

“You need a new phone.”  Darcy muttered, unable to muster her usual level of outrage for Jane’s sentimental attachment to a seven year old Nokia.

“I like this phone.”  Jane murmured, distracted.  “This phone doesn’t break when I’m attacked by aliens.”

“Luddite.”  Darcy accused, but didn’t press the issue.

 

Natasha showed up fifteen minutes later with an absolutely incredible shirt, and Thor, who immediately assaulted her with a handful of actual rose petals and a huge, beaming smile.

“If I break my phone again, I’m going to kill you.”  Darcy stated flatly, beginning to see Jane’s point about the Nokia.

“It is not the usual result of my blessings.”  Thor assured her, looking mildly chagrined as he continued to sprinkle a circle of flowers around her while Natasha smirked.  “I merely sensed the situation would progress more rapidly if you had less opportunity for distraction.”

“Mrmph.”  Darcy replied nonsensically, refusing to admit to anything.

“You will find the effects of this much less disruptive, you have my word.”  He promised.  Darcy rolled her eyes to illustrate how believable she found  _that_ to be, but when the time came, she let him do her hair.


	20. Chapter 20

There was a feeling Steve always got before he made a jump, this tingling in the soles of his feet.  It was nerves, but it felt like he was feeling gravity lightening in on him for just a moment before it reasserted itself with more force than ever before.

He felt like that now, buttoning his third attempt at a shirt in front of the mirror while Bucky stared at the ceiling in a tableau of exaggerated boredom and patience, as if Steve had never had to wait for  _him_ to get ready.  There was a gravity to that bed, too, the space that Bucky was leaving open for him-- had always left open for him.  

Except when he didn’t, because there were times when a man didn’t want to be touched.

After a bad one, Steve wanted to clutch things close, but Bucky went to ground the way wild animals hid when they were injured, ready to lash out and regret it later if he was forced to be in company.

_You need someone who can stand to be touched when we’ve had a shit time of it,_ he’d whispered in Steve’s ear when they’d given up the kitchen to curl around each other, simultaneously wired and exhausted,  _and that ain’t ever gonna be me._

_You don’t have to._ Steve had promised, meaning it.  It made him ache in his whole body, to know that he was alone out there, but if that was what Bucky needed, it was what he’d give him.   _Whatever you need._

_I know that, idiot,_ Bucky had said, when he’d told him as much,  _but what I need doesn’t change what_ _you_ _need._

_Darcy is what we need,_ Steve thought, trying the idea out again.  He was afraid to latch onto it too tightly.  Wanting things always felt like a mistake.

“You know there’s a beautiful, nervous girl a fifteen minute walk from this apartment.” Bucky reminded him, and Steve realized his hands had stopped halfway through their work.  He didn’t think there was anything on his face to betray him, and Bucky’s eyes were still tracing the outlines of the mural he’d started to pencil in on the white ceiling-- but he’d always had a way of reading Steve without having to look.

“I know.  I’m ready.”  He agreed, although he couldn’t stop picking at himself.  Tucking his shirt more firmly, making sure his sleeves were rolled in a way that looked purposeful instead of sloppy.

It was just nerves, the tingling in his feet.  Just the way it always felt before you stepped off of something solid.

 

It wasn’t like Darcy didn’t know it was going to be a  _thing._   The date.  They were picking her up at the tower, and she was wearing girl clothes, and Thor kept trailing her with a freaking bridal train of petals like the universe’s largest and manliest flower girl.  It was going to be a thing.  It already was.

She had just hoped to get to actually go on the date before Tony figured it out, that was all.

_I should have taken the stairs,_ she thought mournfully when the elevator doors opened on Tony, leaning against the back wall.

She felt him drink in every incriminating detail before he started to grin at her; the manicure that was too good for her to have given herself, the braids and blossoms in her hair, the smell of perfume that she didn’t usually bother to wear.

She was wearing heels, and the sound they made when she stepped into the elevator was damning.

She knew that Tony meant well-- or that, at least, he didn’t mean harm-- but Darcy felt suddenly, incredibly exposed, wanted nothing more than to be in her pajamas in bed with her computer where it was safe and no one would be able to look at her.  He was going to toss out some casual innuendo about it that Darcy was supposed to take as a joke that would make everything feel sordid.

After a few minutes of wincing in preparation for a comment that didn’t come, Darcy turned to look at Tony.  He was still grinning, fingers tapping on the back of his tablet in a bid to release some energy, darting glances at her, but he seemed to be keeping his mouth shut.

The grin was actually starting to worry her after a few floors, twitching into something closer to a grimace.  “...Are you okay?”

“I am in so much pain right now.”  Tony said, still showing her that rictus smile.  “You have no idea how painful this is for me.  I want you to appreciate this moment the next time I ask you to science things for me, Lewis.  That I did not say anything.”

“I will do all the science for you.”  Darcy promised, and felt her shoulders relax.  “I will science all the things.”

Tony’s mouth opened, apparently of its own volition, and he slapped a restraining hand over it.  

Darcy cast him a sideways glance, then sighed. “Natasha threaten you?”

His wince was all the answer she needed.

“We’re going to something called Science Pub.”  She confided, taking pity on him.  “You listen to a lecture, and have drinks.”

The muffled speech behind his hand sounded outraged, but Darcy couldn’t tell if Tony was upset because he thought it was a bad date, or because he hadn’t known that something called Science Pub existed.  She suspected the latter, but then the doors were opening onto the lobby, and she forgot about Tony completely.

They didn’t look much different from any other day, objectively speaking.  Steve was wearing that bright blue dress shirt he seemed to default to, and black slacks that were some smooth and almost shiny material she wanted to call waxed twill.  Bucky was almost identical in black and deep red button up, his hair pulled back with more care than usual in a silver clip.  They looked good, gorgeous as always, but it was nothing spectacular until you looked at their faces.

She’d never seen either of them look like that before-- look that happy.  Steve at least had the good grace to look a little nervous, but Bucky…  Bucky had been beaming in the picture he’d texted her, but he hadn’t been glowing like a fucking pregnant woman in a maternity add.  He looked like someone was actually backlighting him, that’s how incandescent he was.

_Oh god, please don’t let me ruin that,_ Darcy thought, feeling a spike of nerves shoot through her stomach when he took her hand, and without thinking about it, she grabbed for Steve’s elbow on the other side.  It felt as clingy and desperate as grabbing on to the corner of her mother’s shirt in the supermarket, but he reeled her in close, like he didn’t mind.

She appreciated it more when the wind hit her a few blocks from the tower, because Natasha had insisted a jacket would ‘ruin the effect’ of the shirt she’d practically gang pressed Darcy into.  It was amazing how much body heat could pass through an arm.

Bucky was talking a mile a minute, moving his hands, almost reminding her of Tony when he was worked up about something that would definitely create collateral damage.

“Day before he deployed, he drug me to that Stark Science Expo.”  Steve murmured, tucking his head down close to her ear until she could feel the warmth of his breath.  “Loves this kind of thing.”

“What a fucking nerd.”  Darcy whispered back, giving Bucky’s hand a squeeze and letting his voice wash over her.  It was beginning to feel like a normal night, going out for some coffee and a picture, comfortable and familiar.  She could smell the flowers Thor had put in her hair faintly, promising that this was something different, but her pulse was slowing.  The sidewalk was glittering with the faintest suggestion of ice, and it seemed suddenly exciting instead of dangerous to be out at night instead of home.

_Maybe I’ll stay out all night,_ Darcy thought, just to see how it made her feel.  If it scared her.

Her pulse jumped, but it didn’t feel like fear.


	21. Chapter 21

Steve had expected it from Bucky, of course-- the touching and the laughing and the leaning in too close, until they got speculative looks from the neighboring tables.  He’d even looked forward to the defiance of it on some level, ready to push back if anyone thought they’d pick on a couple of guys who were a little too light in their loafers.

But it’s New York City, and it’s the future, and no one seems to care much that they’re touching.  It should be nice.

It  _is_ a little bit nice, but it’s also… he’d expected something different.  It was like standing up for a waltz and finding yourself dragged into a tango.  

He’d expected something different from  _Darcy_ , and he didn’t know how to handle both of them tracing fingers over his hands and pressing their warm legs against his.  She’d seemed jittery at the start of the date, dug her fingers into his arm a little too hard, and when the walk had seemed to loosen her up, he’d been glad.  He didn’t want her to be scared.

He’d just thought she’d be the breaks.

But all throughout the evening Bucky was drawing on the skin of Darcy’s wrist with his finger to illustrate something the lecturer had apparently gotten wrong, and she was smiling, holding one of the flowers from her hair to her nose.  They were relaxed and drinking and touching, and Steve had no idea where this was going.

 _We haven’t even kissed yet,_ Steve thought somewhat hysterically, when no one even mentioned walking her home at the end of the night.  Bucky’d tucked her hands into his pockets and was trailing a giggling Darcy behind him in what was definitely the direction of their apartment while Steve tried to will himself into a state of relaxation.  Not for the first time, he regretted his inability to get drunk.

“Steve,”  Bucky called, a block ahead despite the hindrance Darcy posed to his mobility,  “What’s the holdup?”

“Sorry,”  He apologized, guilt making his stomach churn at the frown on Bucky’s face.  If he could slip away and leave them to themselves, maybe he wouldn’t be the one to ruin this.  It was like there was a transparent film between him and them that he couldn’t seem to breach.  He couldn't catch the mood of the night.

He followed a few feet behind them to form a buffer between Darcy and the rest of the foot traffic on sidewalk, feeling very separate from everything around him.  The people around then were just movement, impossible to focus on except that they seemed to all know where they were going.

Lost in himself, Steve didn’t notice the others had stopped moving until he walked into Darcy, bumping into her hard enough that she bounced forward into Bucky, and then back into him.  It pushed his nose into the thick, braided mass of her hair.  One of the fragrant white flowers she was wearing moved against his cheek, as if it were opening, its smell suddenly fresh.  It had a scent he couldn’t describe, sweet and light, and he found himself turning his face towards it to breathe more deeply.  It felt like drinking something hot on a cold day, warmth spreading down his chest and into his stomach as he inhaled.  It felt like… it was like the smell itself, hard to put his finger on, but he felt something tight in his shoulders let go.

“Enjoying yourself?”  Steve looked up from nuzzling Darcy’s hair and found Bucky grinning at him, still holding Darcy’s hands for warmth.

 

Darcy kicked her heels against the frame of Bucky’s bed, holding one of her flowers close to her face in easy smelling distance.  Bucky was in the closet finding her something to sleep in, and Steve was loitering near the door as if he’d like to bolt.

Ordinarily, Darcy would feel the same, but whatever Thor had put into these flowers was some good shit.  She was used to the low-level feeling of panic that underscored all of her interactions with men, and the absence of it was disorienting.

She took a deep, fortifying breath, and held the blossom out to Steve.  “Want one?” She offered, twitching the stem in her fingers to make it dance invitingly.  “It’ll help.”

“Do I ‘want one’.” Steve repeated, then stared at her hand as his expression morphed from confusion to something close to horror.  “The flowers are drugged.”

“I prefer to think of them as ‘magic’, but yes.”  Darcy agreed, and wiggled it at him again.  “They are.”

Steve gave her another horrified stare, and Darcy shrugged, then brought the flower back to her nose.  “Darcy, you can’t--”  He started to argue, just as Bucky emerged from the closet with a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie that looked at least three sizes too big for her.  “Please stop smelling that.”

Darcy considered the flower in her hand, taking in all its details.  It looked very much like a carnation, with a light pink border that traced every frilly white petal.  It reminded her of elementary school, putting food coloring in water to see how plants absorb water.  “No.”  She decided, and continued to breathe in its light scent, enjoying the feeling of safety and relaxation it gave her.  “I like it.”

“Buck, I think she’s… intoxicated.”  Steve hesitated on the last word, struggling to find a way to categorize this.  “From the flowers.”

Bucky glanced at Steve’s face to gauge his seriousness, then raised his eyebrows and reached out a hand towards Darcy.

She surrendered the flower, and watched Bucky bring it to his nose curiously.  He did seem to sink down into himself a little at the scent, his eyebrows jerking up again.  “Shit.”  He muttered, smirking appreciatively, and handed it back to her.  “You high?”

Darcy shrugged noncommittally, kicking her feet to relieve a little of the discomfort that Steve’s stare and her renewed consciousness of the situation has sparked.  “I don’t think so.”  She said honestly taking stock of herself.  Her feet had a few tender spots from the unfamiliar shoes she’d been lent, and she could feel a slight buzz from the drinks she’d had at the lecture, but she didn’t feel impaired.  “I just feel relaxed.”

Bucky nodded to himself and set the pile of clothes on the bed next to her. “I’m gonna go in the kitchen.”  Bucky announced, looking at Steve where he hovered near the door.  “For about fifteen minutes.”

He ghosted his fingers up Steve’s arm on the way out the door, and Darcy saw the muscles in his forearm jump at the contact.  “Talk amongst yourselves.”

His weight made the floorboards in the hall creak so that Darcy could hear his progress away from the room, leaving them alone with each other.  She sighed and let go of her flower, letting it fall to her lap and roll off onto the floor next to the ball of her socks.

“Steve…”  Darcy said, just so he would look at her.  “Do you want me to go?”

He jerked upright, flattening out a slouch she’d barely been able to see, and Darcy wanted to run a hand over the muscles of his back to smooth out the tension.  “No!”  His voice was too loud, like the start of an argument.  “No, I’m just--”  Steve rubbed a hand over his eyes, looking tired.  “I don’t know how to do this.  And it seems so easy for both of you.”

“I’m terrified.”  Darcy promised, already feeling something suspiciously like panic crawl up her throat now that she wasn’t downing it out.  “I’m so freaked out, Steve.”  She fingered the bloom in her lap, but didn’t pick it it.  She could still smell the ones in her hair, but the effects were less obvious when she wasn’t saturating herself in it.  “And this helps.  Does it really bother you so much?”

Steve shook his head, giving the contents of her lap a look that had a measure of longing.  “As long as you know what it’s doing, and you want it…”

“I know it’s a crutch.”  Darcy admitted, looking down.  “But… it won’t always be this scary, right?  It feels  _good_ , when I’m not scared.  I want that.”

“I don’t want you to be scared.”  Steve’s voice was quiet and close, and Darcy realized he’d come forward, his legs at the edge of her vision while she stared at her hands.

Darcy swallowed, and forced the words out.  “Help me with my hair, so we can go to bed?”

She heard him blow out a breath, and then the mattress tilted under his weight as he positioned himself on his knees behind her.

His fingers were careful not to pull as he started to work the braids loose, and Darcy leaned back into it, trying to breathe slowly.  Each open coil of hair brought a wave of scent, and Darcy could feel herself relaxing again, the bubble of excitement that kept getting smothered by her nervousness rising to the surface again.

A flower fell out of her hair and rolled down into the divot between their bodies, and Darcy reached back to rescue it, brushing Steve’s knee in the process.  She shifted back to tuck herself in between his legs, chasing his body heat, and the hands in her hair stopped, then wrapped around her.  

It was more comforting than the flowers.  “Thank you.” She murmured, reaching up to curl her hands around his arms, holding them there.  His grip tightened briefly, and she felt his breath warm on the top of her head, almost a laugh.

“This does feel good.”  He mumbled, his face pressing against her hair like it had on the street.  “I can see why…”

“I think this is the way it’s supposed to be.”  Darcy said, rubbing the lines of the muscles in his forearm.  “Just… comfortable.”

“If I get any more comfortable, I’m going to fall asleep in my clothes.”  He warned in a slow voice, but made no attempt to move away.


	22. Chapter 22

Steve didn’t really think the flowers were making him do what he was doing.  The smell of them did seem to trip a switch in him, make the muscles in his shoulders loosen up and his thoughts less pressing.  And while the adrenaline that had been pumping through his body all night didn’t  _stop_ , it seemed to slow.

The flowers did  _something_ , but they weren’t why he’d crawled onto the bed, or why he was pressing his face into her hair.  They were a nice excuse, though.  It would have been easy to pretend that he didn’t quite know what he was doing, if he’d wanted to.

Only, Steve had never trusted things that were easy.  Everything he had ever had or done that was important was something hard, something he’d had to fight for.  Important things were supposed to be earned.

He couldn’t call this easy, but it didn’t feel like something he’d earned either.  It felt illicit to touch her, even though she’d asked him to, guilt and excitement a confusing tangle in his head he couldn’t begin to unravel.  

If he didn’t fight it, and just breathed in, there was a warm animal comfort of holding and being held.  Darcy was still trailing her fingers over his arm like she thought he needed to be warmed, and if he focused on  _that_ , shivers of feeling rolled in his stomach.  He didn’t know if he liked it.

It was a relief when Bucky walked back into the room, pulling him back from some strange edge he’d been leaning over.  He seemed content to stand in the doorway and watch them, expression considering.  There was nothing displeased about it, but he wasn’t smiling.  Steve wondered what they looked like to him.

Darcy held out a hand, and Bucky smiled then, his eyes focusing on her face.  He was soft around Darcy, the way he’d been before the war.

 _Softer than the guy in those books?_  Steve thought, then tried to push it from his mind.  He didn’t want to bring that in here.  He still didn’t know how to integrate that into this-- the idea that this was what Bucky  _did_.  He couldn’t imagine doing this with anyone but Darcy.

When Bucky took her hand, Steve pulled back from her, the press of the waistband of his slacks against his stomach suddenly noticeable.  He changed in the closet quickly, trying to breath slowly to keep the scent of the flowers inside of himself for as long as possible.

By the time he walked back into the bedroom, it took all Steve’s concentration to keep his breathing steady, panic beginning to spread up his chest until it felt like a heart attack.  He fumbled for the edge of the bed and sunk his face into Darcy’s hair, not caring if it was a crutch.  He noticed that his hands were shaking when they wrapped around her, but they stilled soon enough.

He let his muscles relax, let himself not think again except to notice the warmth of the girl in his arms.

When he was calm again, he glanced up to find Bucky frowning at him.

“...Steve,”  He started, and Steve could hear the rejection in it.

“I can do it.”  He blurted, pulling himself closer to Darcy’s back to shield himself from disappointing him.  “I can do this.”

Bucky blinked, a furrow tucking deeper into his forehead.  “Steve, you don’t-- what do you…?”

“We’re not having sex.”  Darcy said, like it was a response to something he’d said, and the muscles in his arms twitched in surprise.  He felt her head turn to look at Bucky, her hands stroking over his arms soothingly.  “You didn’t talk to him about it?”

Bucky pressed his hands to the back of his neck, the way he did when he was embarrassed but trying to seem cool.  “We talked,”  He mumbled, then sighed.  “I figured-- I mean, after we slept together, I thought he’d know…”

Steve remembered the morning's fairly platonic cuddling, and felt a little ridiculous for assuming… whatever he’d been assuming.  He felt himself flush, the heat spreading down his neck, and hid his face in Darcy’s shoulder.

Darcy reached up to pet a hand over his hair, her wrist at an awkward angle. “I thought we should do this first.”  She said softly, as if they were having a private conversation.  “Just… get used to each other.  So it’s not so…”

She left off the last word, and Steve filled it in for her in his mind with all the words for what it was.   _Intimidating.  Foreign.  Terrifying._

“I thought it would help.”  She continued.  “We talked about it, that maybe we would… You don’t have to--”

Steve tried imagining it, the three of them sleeping together in Bucky’s bed.  Not like  _that_ , just something comfortable, until the way that they smelled and moved was familiar to each other.

“I want that.”  He muffled his voice in Darcy’s hair.  It wasn’t the flowers that made him say it.  “I’m sorry I’m so…”

There were words to fill in there.   _Repressed.  Scared.  Difficult._

Steve didn’t use any of them.  “It’s hard.”  He admitted, and it was hard to say.  But it should be.

“It’s hard.”  Darcy agreed, and rubbed her face against against one of his hands like she was marking her territory.

 

Darcy would have never classified herself as particularly lucid first thing in the morning, but as she watched Bucky miss his mouth with his fork for the second time she began to feel positively functional in comparison.

“Is he okay?”  She asked, keeping her eyes open enough to see her coffee cup and no further.  Her voice was scratchy and slow, like it resented needing to leave her mouth so early in the morning.

“He’s fine.”  Steve said, his voice oppressively loud and coherent.  He glanced at the omelet on her plate, and Darcy sighed.

“I’m going to eat it.”  She promised, sucking down a fourth of her coffee so quickly she could feel the liquid slosh in her stomach.  “As soon as I can open my eyes all the way.”

Bucky grunted and shoved another forkful into his mouth with a blank, unfocused look on his face.  Steve leaned over to pull his hair back from his face, the gesture practiced.  It was the kind of touch that Steve was good at, something helpful that he could justify to himself.

When she’d woken up he’d been petting her hair, but he’d stopped when she’d shifted.  Her face had been pressed into Steve’s chest, hands curled up under his shirt against the firm skin of his abdomen, and Darcy had felt immediately self-conscious in a way that had made her certain the flowers weren’t working anymore.  She’d slid her arms around his waist anyway, trying to squeeze out all of her anxiety, and Steve had rubbed his hands over her back and promised her breakfast.

After a second cup of coffee and half of her breakfast, Darcy felt awake enough to uncurl from the defensive perch she’d adopted on her chair.  She stuck her feet into Steve’s lap with a frisson of nervousness, but he just kept spooning oatmeal into his mouth while he shifted his free hand to hold her ankles.

“He’ll be awake in a half hour,”  He nodded his head in Bucky’s direction, raising his eyebrows a little as Bucky repeatedly stabbed his fork at an empty section of his plate.  “We’ll take you home then.”

Darcy had the urge to pull herself back into a ball like a hedgehog.  “We might be pelted with flower petals.”  She warned, then considered Tony.  “Or filmed.”

“No we won’t.”  He rubbed a thumb over the tendon at the back of her foot, and Darcy stretched into the contact.  “I disabled the security cameras.”

When Darcy stared at him, Steve shrugged, swirling a pocket of brown sugar into the rest of his bowl.  “I get up early.”


	23. Chapter 23

There was no socially acceptable way to ask your best friend if her boyfriend had left any of his flower drugs lying around, so Darcy didn’t bother trying to sugarcoat it.

By the time Jane answered the door with her shirt half buttoned, pantsless, Darcy was leaning her full body weight into the doorbell. “Help me, Jane. I’m dying.”

“Darcy, it’s really…” Jane paused to yawn, opening her eyes wide enough in the process to take in the entirety of Darcy’s appearance. “...You’re wearing last night’s clothes.”

“I’m having a heart attack.” Darcy promised, pressing a hand to the center of her wrinkled chest in emphasis. “I need more of your boyfriend’s weird drug flowers before I have a complete mental breakdown and start sobbing in this hallway.”

Jane nodded and wandered back into her apartment, yawning into her sleeve. “I think there are some in the kitchen…”

Darcy fell on the vase sitting on the dining room counter like it was the last piece of cake at a wedding. “Oh thank Thor.”

“I’ll tell him.” Jane promised, shuffling across the linoleum to pour herself a cup of coffee that it would be optimistic to call ‘day old’. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Do  _you_  want to talk about it?” Darcy countered, watching Jane do an increasingly accurate Bucky impression as she missed her mouth with her coffee mug. “Because you seem kind of half conscious.”

“I’m listening.” Jane nodded with her whole upper body to keep her coffee as close to her mouth as possible at all times. “I am coherent.  I am here to support you emotionally through the terrible experience of dating two of the hottest men in existence.”

“Your condescension is noted, and ignored.” Darcy took another deep breath, trying to find the floaty, happy place that had gotten her out of the door last night. “Jane, I know it’s stupid, okay?   _I know that._   But all I can think, the whole time I’m with them, is that I’m not going to be able to do it.  I’m never going to be able to relax, and eventually they’re going to get sick of it, and just go off and date each other and leave me out of it, and maybe that would be the best thing for everyone-- And this is exactly the reason why I can’t relax, I’m completely self-sabotaging, and I wish I could just  _not_ , but I can’t stop,” Darcy slammed the vase down impatiently, “ _and these are just carnations, aren’t they?!”_

“They may have been the control group, yes.” Jane muttered, looking shifty.  Darcy repressed the urge to throw something at her.  “I just wanted to be sure it wasn’t a placebo effe-- you’re right, that’s not important right now,” Jane held up her hands defensively.  “I don’t have any, and I thought you’d freak out.”

Darcy slumped against the counter. “Oh my god, you’re kidding me.”

“Well, I was thinking about some of the other things, like everyone wanting to touch your hair,” Jane tapped her cup against her lips thoughtfully, completely unperturbed by Darcy’s distress, “Is it a universal fertility ritual?  Or is it something that  _you_ already liked? And I wanted to do some experiments.”

“What does that have to with aaanything.” Darcy complained, her face still pressed into her arms.

“It has to do with that nature of the magic.  Does it have some kind of blanket effect, or is it subject-specific?”  Jane continued, apparently ignoring her.  “If it’s subject-specific, I hesitate to use the term ‘psychosomatic’, but it does seem to be influenced by what you need/want the effect to be.”

“Yeah, Jane, I just said that.”  Darcy rolled her eyes.  “I literally just told you that I want to relax, and I can’t, so I want the flowers.  I get it.”

“Well, if you know you want to relax, why don’t you just...” Jane trailed off under Darcy’s withering stare.

“Yes, Jane.  I’ll just stop having anxiety.  I mean, that’s how that works, right?  I do have all those folders of cute animals on my computer, maybe if I just look at a lot of pictures of baby sloths, my fear of intimacy will disappear completely!”

“That was stupid, I see that now.” Jane muttered, trying to cut off the onslaught.

Darcy ignored her.  “It’s such a simple solution, I don’t know how I didn’t think of it before.  Just  _stop_ being anxious.  I know I’ve said it before, but you’re a genius Jane, it’s incredible.”

“I’m sorry.  Honestly.” Darcy squinted at her friend’s face, checking for signs of insincerity. “That was condescending.”

“Your apology is accepted,” She decided, “On the condition that you now provide emotional support.”

“And hair petting?” Jane offered.  

Darcy shrugged, but didn’t move away when Jane started to pat her head. “I don’t know why I like it.” She admitted. “I’ve always found it really relaxing when you go get your haircut, and they wash it for you, though.”

“It’s non-threatening.” Jane scratched her fingernails over Darcy’s scalp.  Darcy tilted her head to give her better access, nodding to herself.

“I guess. As soon as things get sexual, it feels like that’s all I have to offer…” Darcy puffed out a breath, staring in front of herself blankly. “It’s not like I haven’t dated before. But once you do anything, after that, it’s this expectation. ‘Oh, you kissed me, now you always have to kiss me’.  And if you don’t want to it’s like you’re denying them something they feel that you owe them.”

“That is disgusting.” Jane acknowledged. “But there's two of them, can’t they just, you know, make out with each other then?”

“That’s what I’m hoping, but then I start thinking, well, why am I even here then, and the anxiety spiral starts, and, ugh.” She turned her face into the counter. “I don’t know.”

“I’m sure Thor has more flowers.” Jane offered, then tilted her head. “I wonder if there’s a way to synthesize them.”

“I think they’ve already done that.  They’re called anti-depressants.” Darcy muttered, although the idea of something less dramatic than the flowers wasn’t completely unappealing.

“It’d have to be an inhalant though… maybe a perfume?” Jane continued, forehead already wrinkling with the expression she adopted when considering matters of Science.  She gave Darcy’s hair an absent stroke and wandered towards the door.

“You’re still not wearing pants.” Darcy called, watching Jane feel along the wall for the doorknob.  Jane grunted as if she’d heard, but when she found the front door, she walked into the hallway anyway.

 

After the first hour, Steve had taken Bucky’s cellphone away.

“You’ve sent her ten text messages.” Steve said, trying to look severe. “You can have it back when she answers one of them.”

Bucky muttered something under his breath, but other than a half-assed snatch in the direction of his phone, he didn’t offer any resistance.  He watched Steve slide the phone on top of the refrigerator with raised eyebrows.

“...You know I can get that.” Bucky said after a pause, stretching his legs out to bury his feet in the couch cushions.  Neither of them had gotten properly dressed that morning, but Steve had at least changed into sweatpants.  Bucky was still wearing what he’d slept in and didn’t seem inclined to do anything other than lounge.

Steve shrugged, settling onto the couch’s armrest. “It’s where Mom always put the cookies. Felt appropriate.”

Bucky pulled his knees in close to clear a seat, and Steve slid down onto it. Bucky immediately resettled his feet in the now-available lap, and Steve wrapped his fingers around his ankles without thought.  It was an easy kind of touch, casual and familiar.  Anything more carnal was still daunting, but he and Bucky had been touching like this since they were kids.

“I feel like she’s gonna change her mind, if we leave her alone too long.” Bucky admitted, eyes drifting to his cell phone. “Start overthinking, you know?”

“Maybe she’s working.” Steve suggested, although he’d had the same thought.  Darcy’d been uncharacteristically quiet on the walk to the tower, and he’d spent the entire time with his hands stuffed uncomfortably in his pockets.  He’d wanted to offer an arm or hold her hand, but he hadn’t been able to ask for it.  “We  _have_  been monopolizing her time lately.  She and Jane must have a lot to catch up on.”

Bucky made a sour face, then nudged his feet against Steve’s stomach in a not-at-all subtle request for more attention.  “Fine, but she’s coming over tomorrow.”

 _He knows how to ask for what he wants,_ Steve observed dryly, working his thumbs into the arches of Bucky’s feet.  Steve was positive that he wasn’t capable of that level of cat-like self advocacy, although it was undeniably effective.  “You’re demanding.”

“I’m decisive.” Bucky corrected, not offended in the slightest.  “You should try it.”

 _Probably,_ Steve admitted to himself, not willing to give Bucky the satisfaction.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I award blame/credit to cat-onawall for this whole Monopoly thing.

Darcy was wearing one of those short flouncy skirts women seemed to wear now, sitting on the floor with her feet propped in his lap, and when she shifted to roll the dice or move her token around the board, Bucky could feel the subtle movement of her calf muscles against his thighs-- it was the sort of evening he’d been fantasizing about.  

And he couldn’t fucking enjoy it, because of Steven ‘I Hate Losing’ Rogers.

“It’s your turn.” Steve reminded him innocently, as if Bucky’s position on the board had entirely escaped his attention. “You have to pay to get out now; it’s been three turns.”

Bucky scowled at the gauntlet of hotels between the jail square where his token was located and free parking, but obediently handed over his $50.  “I still think that’s supposed to go in the middle.”  He commented as Steve tucked the bill into the bank.

“It’s nowhere in the rules, we’ve checked three times, stop stalling.”

Bucky held the dice up for Darcy to blow on for luck, then dropped them, one skidding across the carpet to land next to the small pile of unclaimed property while the other knocked two houses off of one of Darcy’s properties.

“You’re sucking up all of my luck,” She commented, watching Bucky’s upside down top hat make its way safely to free parking courtesy of the double five he’d just rolled, then looked down at her tiny pile of paper money.  “I will lose this turn.”

The prediction was made with all the solemnity of the Oracle of Delphi, and proved to be just as accurate when her Scottie dog landed squarely on St. James Avenue.

“With a hotel, that’s $950.”  Steve told her, picking up the property card to squint at it as if he didn’t have all the values memorized.  Darcy pursed her lips in thought, regarding her few unmortgaged properties, and didn’t even attempt to collect it.  Shoving everything she’d once owned at Steve, she withdrew the tiny metal dog from the board and handed it to Bucky.  “Avenge me.”

_ We could be playing strip poker,  _ Bucky thought sourly as Darcy gave up the floor to stretch her back before flopping onto the couch.   _ I could be losing. _

When Steve’s next roll landed him on Community Chest and it awarded him $150, the corner of his mouth twitched, and Bucky barely restrained himself from flipping the board.

“Yeah, I’m done.”  He announced, shoving the dice Steve tried to hand to him back in his face and getting to his feet.  His feet and hands felt twitchy, but he tamped down the urge to pace.

“So… You’re forfeiting?”  Steve asked in his I Just Want Clarification voice.  “I win?”

“Yes,  _ you win _ ,”  Bucky emphasized, because of course he  _ had _ to make him say it.  “Capitalism is violence, can we just watch a damn movie now?”

He’d climbed onto the couch to bury his face in Darcy’s stomach so he didn’t have to look at the other man’s stupid, smug face before he remembered that it might be too much for her without her flowers.  Nothing in her body language seemed to protest-- her muscles were relaxed, at least-- but Bucky was still thinking of withdrawing his weight when she started to draw her fingers through his hair.

“Is this okay?” Darcy asked uncertainly, and Bucky shook himself out of his surprise to rest his face a little higher on her abdomen to give her easier access to his head.  

“S’fine, sweetheart,” He murmured, already feeling his heartbeat start to slow down from the fast restlessness that had made him feel like he had to measure the dimensions the room with his feet.  When she started to drag her nail over his scalp, Bucky felt his eyes close involuntarily.  Even in the face of such total relaxation, she was still hesitant, resting her free hand awkwardly on his shoulder.  Bucky turned his face into her to blow a hot breath into her his face, and she made a little huffing sound that was almost a laugh, then tugged his hair lightly in retaliation.  “Don’t be weird.”  She ordered, thumb rubbing against his shoulder affectionately.   _ That’s not exactly a deterrent,  _ he thought, voicing only a ‘hmm’ noise.

“You know, I’m starting to feel left out,” Steve observed, the plastic clack of houses hitting each other sounding from inside the Monopoly game as he returned the box to its station under the entertainment center.  “It’s lonely at the top.” Bucky’s voice emerged from his throat muzzily, without rancor.  He kept his eyes closed, listening to the whir of the dvd player opening and closing but tuning out the movie.  Steve stationed himself on the floor next to the couch, his shoulders warm and solid against Bucky’s arm, and made soft commentary to Darcy about the cinematography, or the color composition.  When Bucky shifted to free his arm, Steve caught his hand and trapped it with his own, tangling their fingers together loosely and resting them on his shoulder.

He didn’t exactly  _ sleep _ \-- Bucky drifted, basking in the moment and its rightness.  There had always been something about the way that Darcy reacted to being embraced that made him think she ran few degrees cooler than they did.  When either of them hugged her or offered an arm, she seemed to relish the warmth, rubbing her hands against them unconsciously the way you did with a warm cup in the winter, but absent that option, she used her feet.  The feeling of their feet rubbing together at the end of the couch, her smooth skin catching on his calluses, was so intimate and innocent that it almost scared him.  They were in a sort of bubble where everything was sweetly platonic and yet hovering on the edge of something sexual, and Bucky was reluctant to push them over that line.  It felt like the sort of thing that wouldn’t really be a choice any of them consciously  _ made _ , just something that would happen when things built to a certain point, like a rock slide, or a volcanic eruption.  

_ A geyser?  _ Bucky mused, trying to find something that skewed more towards ‘natural event’ and less towards ‘disaster’.   _ A migration? _

“He’s not asleep?” Darcy asked Steve softly, still scratching his head gently.  Bucky felt him shake his head, the hand holding his telegraphing affection in a short squeeze.

“No,” Steve confirmed, turning his head to slant a quick kiss over Bucky’s knuckles distractedly-- the movie’s music was loud and seemed to be alluding to a climactic moment on screen.  “He just goes quiet when he’s happy.”

 

The third time Darcy slept over with the boys, she forgot her flowers the way you forget your credit card at a restaurant.  They’d been on the table by the front door next to the bowl she kept her keys in.  She’d looked right at them as she walked out, distracted by the weird way her hair was curling in the humidity and by the thought of Steve waiting in the hallway.  She hadn’t needed them to cook an over spiced goulash that Bucky seemed to enjoy more for its imperfections, or to curl up in bed with her face pressed into Steve’s chest while he breathed softly into her hair, his muscles twitching occasionally in his sleep like a dog’s.

Then in the morning when they’d left the house, Darcy had taken Steve’s hand while he joked with Bucky, and a woman had looked at them.  It was the kind of look she recognized now, assessing and standing in judgement in one long stare. I Don’t Know What This Is But I Don’t Like It.  Darcy had felt a flare of anxiety in her chest, and her hand and twitched in the phantom of a gesture, reaching for something that wasn’t there.  She’d just sat with the feeling, rolling the anxiety over in her mind, puzzled, trying to pinpoint when things had shifted.  Intellectually, she knew that anyone offended by the relatively unobjectionable sight of an apparently heterosexual couple holding hands would be even more offended by Steve and Bucky alone, but there was still a part of her that shrunk instinctively from public judgement.  That they had barely done more than kiss was irrelevant-- she felt exposed.  Like people could look at them and see all of her desires writ plain.  

But… that had always been there.  What surprised her was where the anxiety stopped.  _ I’m not afraid of them,  _ Darcy decided, prodding her feelings.  There were still some nerves there, the natural anxiety anyone felt about things that were new and strange, but it wasn’t crippling.  She trusted them, in a way that was hard to articulate-- trusted that their touches weren’t the coin they were paying in exchange for sex, the way some men seemed to.  They were just affection, without expectation.

Darcy felt like a wild animal who had slowly become accustomed to the scent of the person who was trying to tame it and was now in the uncertain position of wanting the promised warmth, but was not entirely sure how to accept it.

_ How do you do it?  _ Darcy wondered.  She knew how to be friends, the silly almost-flirting that she and Jane bounced back and forth; it was close to what Bucky and Steve did, but there was a different flavor to it, a kind of intent... 

Bucky was squeezing and releasing her fingers at odd intervals, responding subconsciously to her tension.  Darcy tried to relax her shoulders, and sighed, knowing that there were no flowers to fix  _ this _ .  She’d just have to throw some things at the wall and see what stuck.


	25. Chapter 25

It took three aborted attempts at flirting for all of Darcy’s dreams of subtlety to shatter into a million irrevocable pieces.  

She just couldn’t do it-- look inviting and draw people into her, even with the constant example of Bucky before her eyes.  It was impossible for her tilt her face the right way, to find the right ratio of personal space to make someone just  _ need  _ to press their lips to her neck.  She’d carefully aped the body language she was supposed to use, and the looks she was supposed to give, and it didn’t work for her.

Darcy sighed and blew her artistically arranged hair out of her face, wincing as she remembered the weird look Steve had given her the last time she’d tried to use Bucky’s ‘my cheek is ready to be kissed’ trick.  “Yeah, I’m giving up.”

“You no longer desire my assistance preparing for your date?” Thor asked, pausing mid-braid.

Darcy flapped her hand at him impatiently. “No, you’re doing great, keep doing the do. I was just talking to myself.”

“Musing aloud often leads to new avenues of thought.” Thor agreed, pulling her hair into a tight spiral. “Should you wish to share your dilemma, I would gladly offer the wisdom of my experience.”

Darcy tilted her head forward to make pinning her hair into place easier, staring at  her legs and the slick black material of the pants Natasha had made her wear. “I’ve been trying to be subtle, like, in my romantic overtures?  But it’s not really working, so, I think I should stop.”

“There is much mystery to the art of seduction.” Thor sympathized, his voice muffled by the bobby pins he held in his mouth. “As your partners are willing, are such tactics truly what is required?  Can you not make your advances openly?”

“I guess,” Darcy admitted in a voice that sounded sullen even to  _ her  _ ears. “But it’s embarrassing to have to be that demanding, you know?  Like, if you have to go around ordering people to kiss you, it kind of makes you feel insecure.”

“Such hesitation is a mark of the honor of your suitors-- they do not wish to press you with unwanted advances.  Once you make your desires plain, I am certain the need to make such demands would abate.” He tilted her head up and surveyed his work with a calm, critical eye before nodding in apparent satisfaction.

“I know you’re right, I just feel awkward about it.”  Darcy patted gently at her hair, impressed at how neatly tucked and tightly contained it felt-- her locks normally took every opportunity to escape their bonds.  “Thank you for your help.”

“It is a pleasure to provide such service to one who has oft provided aid to myself when not caring diligently for my lady.” Thor promised, clapping his hands firmly onto her shoulders.  When he smiled like that, his face bright and open, it was hard for Darcy to remember that he was something as huge as a god. “Do not hesitate to call on me at need.”

Deciding this was a good time to practice her assertiveness, Darcy held open her arms. “Hug me?”

Immediately swept off the floor in a bear hug, Darcy hoped that the rest of the night’s requests would be answered with slightly less enthusiasm.   _ Well, maybe not,  _ she amended, relaxing her head onto Thor’s broad shoulder.  It was very comfortable to be held like this.

“You are a very worthy woman.” Thor told her, rubbing a warm hand over her back. “And have chosen worthy partners.  It will be well.”

As she felt her bones begin to liquefy, a suspicion welled up in her mind. “Thor, is this a magic hug, or are you just really good at hugging?”

“Why can it not be both?” Thor asked, giving her another firm squeeze that left her floating in a sea of security and happiness.

Darcy conceded the point.

  
  


Steve always had the faint but persistent anxiety when Darcy was over at their apartment that he was failing her as a boyfriend in some vital way.  If that was what he was.

He and Bucky had always been something deep but non-specific, with boundaries that stretched like taffy… no words seemed to encompass everything they were.

He wanted to be able to stamp a label on it, to say “This is my partner” or “My lover”.  Boyfriend. Girlfriend.  To have a word, so he’d know what they wanted from him.

Now that the absolute terror had faded, a new set of anxieties had replaced it.  Were they treating Darcy right, staying in as often as they did?  Was he ignoring Bucky when they were home together, pursuing their own activities?  Or was he smothering both of them by taking up too much of their time and making overwhelming emotional demands?

Their only plans for the night had been movies, but Darcy had still done her hair and was wearing what even Steve could recognize as ‘an outfit’.  When they’d had their faux dates, she’d dressed in jeans and comfortable looking sweaters; the new formality was jarring for him.  While he thought that she looked lovely, it only reinforced the feeling that he wasn’t doing enough for her, and that there was a distance between them that needed to be worried over.  All through dinner he had thought there was something Darcy had been trying to say, opening her mouth and looking at them before losing her nerve and sticking a fork full of ravioli between her teeth.

By the time they moved to the living room Steve was so tense that watching Bucky flop on Darcy’s lap as soon as she sat down with the complete disregard for personal space most often seen in cats almost made him flinch.

Darcy laughed, glancing down at Bucky with obvious affection, then seemed to notice Steve hovering in the doorway.  Frowning, she reached a hand out in his direction.  He found himself unnaturally caught by movement of the muscles in her forearm under her skin as she turned her wrist, wishing he could draw it.  His mind had always had that tendency, latching on to little details when he was under stress, pressing them indelibly into his memory.  The gunpowder and dust smell of the room when Peggy had shot at him the first time he’d held the shield had been like that, and the shape of the snowflake that had landed on his eyelash right after Bucky had fallen.

Realizing that he’d been standing there far too long, Steve took a long step forward and dropped down to sit on the floor with his back to the couch, hoping they wouldn’t make him talk about it now.  It was too mixed up in his head at the moment, reality and insecurity.  He didn’t want to open his mouth and have all of that spill out.

When the television turned on and something he couldn’t possibly be expected to concentrate on began to play, he let go a little, letting his body sink against the couch cushions.

When Darcy began to run her fingers lightly through his hair, Steve wanted to find it relaxing-- and it almost was.  He couldn’t focus on the movie, or the soft conversation taking place on the couch, drifting in an in-between state.

And then she pressed her lips to the back of his head, a quick touch on the skin behind his earlobe, and everything came roaring back into focus.  Something warm and damp moved over the ridge of his other ear, a mouth surrounded by the beginnings of stubble, and a shiver slipped down his back so intense that his knees would have given out if he’d been using them.  There must have been some change in the arrangement of the bodies behind him while he’d drifted, because it was impossible for them to both be kissing him with Bucky’s head still in her lap.

They kept it relatively chaste, no teeth or tongues, just the brush of lips along the side of his throat and the ghost of their breaths, but Steve felt like he was dissolving.  His stomach felt strange while every muscle in his body seemed to shake, completely beyond his control.  He could actually hear himself breathing, it was so fast and shallow.

The thought that he was paralyzed crossed Steve’s mind as the edge of Bucky’s jaw rubbed the sensitive skin along the side of his neck, making him shudder so intensely it felt like a convulsion.  

He made a sound.

“That didn’t strike me as a protest,” Bucky commented, mouth still flush against Steve’s neck, right over his pulse, “But I think we should check in.  You doing okay, sweetheart?”

Steve licked his bottom lip, trying to find words for what he was with his head spinning the way it did.  “Is this--” It came out as a croak, and he swallowed.  “Is it?  Are we-- is this it?”

Something cool rested against his collarbone, the skin of Darcy’s forehead, and she muttered something to herself before giving him a fast kiss on the cheek like she was steeling herself for something.  “Yeah.  If you want to, I mean-- I will.  I want to.”

“I don’t think I can move,” Steve replied stupidly, then closed his eyes in embarrassment, but no one laughed at him.

“We’ll work up to it,” Bucky promised with a grin so obviously present that was almost audible, tugging lightly at the shoulder of Steve’s shirt in a prompting motion that drew him up into the tangle of the couch.


	26. Chapter 26

Steve woke with the sun in his face and tried to roll away from it, only to find himself trapped.  Freeing himself from the weight of Bucky’s arm with a grumble, he was greeted by a face full of curls that shifted and made a soft sound of confusion.

Yawning into her hair, he pulled Darcy in close, then froze as their legs touched.  It had always been the most comfortable for them to sleep with one of her legs tucked in between his, and they’d moved into it naturally.  

Of course, in the past they’d both been wearing pajama pant.

They weren’t naked, at least, both in their underwear, Darcy in a shirt he’d last seen on Bucky, but there was nothing between them otherwise.  It felt good to have their feet rub against each other at the foot of the bed, companionable and familiar from their more platonic sleepovers.

“So.” Darcy’s voice was scratchy with sleep, and she paused to wet her throat, nuzzling her face against his chest as if the contact steadied her. “Scale of one to ten, how much are you freaking out?”

Steve swallowed as he felt the smooth skin of her thigh brush him somewhere _very_ personal as she snuggled closer. “Six?” He suggested, voice a little higher than usual.  When he inhaled he could smell the faintest scent of flowers in her hair, overlayed by shampoo and something chemical, like hairspray.  He couldn’t help but wish for Thor’s flowers right now, although Darcy’s smells had their own comfort.

“I’m at a four.” Darcy confided, her voice sending a warm puff of air onto his skin.  Steve shivered and felt goosebumps raise the hair on his arms. “Talk to me about it?”

Opening his mouth felt like pushing a weight off of himself, but he did it. “Whenever I… feel lust, and act on it, I feel that I’m committing some kind of wrong.  That I’ll do something that’s not wanted, and you won’t tell me out of politeness.”

“Yes, I’m humoring you.” Darcy agreed, dry as the desert. “It’s not like I have the most transparent facial expressions in existence.  You’d never be able to tell if I wasn’t happy.”

Steve smiled a little, thinking of her comically obvious looks of disgust when someone said something she didn’t approve of. “You know it’s not that easy.”

Darcy sighed, her eyelashes brushing against him as she rested her head more comfortably on his arm. “Everything is terrifying.”

They were quiet for a while after that, and Steve found himself aware of every place their bodies touched, conscious of the trickle of sweat from his armpits.  His body was such a strange object to him at times, ready to expose him at a moment’s notice. “I promise, I would tell you.  If it was unwanted.”

Steve shook his head, pressing his mouth into her hair. “I know, I know, I know…” He promised, trying to breathe in and out slow enough to calm himself. “I just can’t get my footing.  I don’t know what the rules are.”

Darcy tried to look up and almost knocked the top of her head into his chin. “What do you mean?” She asked, once she’d been able to pull back enough to look into his eyes.  It had been easier to talk when it was just to the blank wall on the other side of the bed.

“I mean… What is this?” His hands on her back flapped, the beginning of a gesture. “What are we?”

“ _We_ are sleeping.” A grumpy murmur announced, shoving a handful of comforter into Steve’s face.  The warm face that pressed to his back afterwards didn’t seem to be holding a grudge, though.

Bucky’s arms wrapped around his waist, both warm, although a few hairs caught in the little overlapping layers of metal on his left arm.  Steve barely noticed, too focused on his comfort at the contact.  When they were like this, curled up together, everything felt right and his anxieties faded.  He knew they were there, waiting to be picked up when his feet hit the floor, but for now they were shoved down where he didn’t have to look at them for a while.

“Buck… Are you naked?” He hadn’t meant to say it, but certain things were becoming obvious as soon as he’d relaxed against him.

“Buck naked,” Bucky snorted, still sounding half asleep. “S’a pretty good one, Stevie.  If I’d known you’d get funnier I’d have tried to get you in bed sooner.”

“We get into bed all the time,” Darcy argued, clearly getting comfortable herself.  Her voice had the slurred sound it got when she was trying to stay awake.

“Fine, if I’d known you’d get funnier, I’d have--” A pillow muffled whatever vulgar ending Bucky had planned for that sentence.

  


She wasn’t pelted with flower petals when she got back to the tower, or assaulted with questions about why she’d come back at noon in a shirt that wasn’t hers with her hair a wreck.  The security guard at the desk didn’t even blink.

It would have been easy to imagine that no one had even noticed, if there hadn’t been a cake waiting on her doorstep.

Darcy’s first instinct was to blame Tony, but it was too elegant.  Tony would have written something vulgar on it, but this only had white sugar flowers worked into a heart on the top.  They looked a little like carnations.

“I am disturbed by the knowledge that Natasha probably made you.” She told the cake as she lifted its glass platter carefully.  The mental image of Thor in an apron had briefly flashed through her mind, but leaving it here quietly wasn’t his style.  

As she deposited it in the kitchen, Darcy reflected that it might be the only food of real substance in the room.  The inside of her apartment had the stillness of somewhere that had long been empty, complete with dust motes drifting in the light from the windows-- it didn’t feel like a place that she lived anymore.

Feeling the beginning of a caffeine headache start to spread through the front of her head, Darcy flipped her electric kettle on, pulling coffee grounds from the freezer and dumping them unmeasured into her french press.  It seemed like a good pair for the cake, anyways.

She was waiting for it to steep when Jane let herself in with all the subtlety of a pan falling down a flight of stairs, dropping her keys twice.

“I am coming into the kitchen.” She announced loudly. “Me, Jane, your friend.  Who just came to get my notes, and who does not want to see anything.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Darcy returned, removing the cover on the cake with a telling clink of glass. “Because I’m all alone here, with this entire chocolate cake and all this fresh coffee.”

“Cake?” Jane’s voice piped higher in interest, peering into the room with eyes that squinted at the light.  Judging from the state of her clothing, she’d had a longer night than Darcy had.

“Cake.  No coffee.” She decided, casting a stern eye at the dirty black rim on the sleeve of Jane’s sweater where she’d been using it to wipe the whiteboard. “And then you’re going to bed.”

“ _You’re_ going to bed,” Jane rejoined, surly.  Then she gave Darcy a sharp look, the kind she was capable of then her mind wasn’t preoccupied with Science.  “That… is not your shirt.  You have a hickey… and an entire cake.  Oh. My god.”

“Hmm?” Darcy asked, pretending to not listen as she took a butcher knife to the center of the cake, separating out one perfect flower for each of their slices.

“You--” Jane started to hit her, the sharp bones of her knuckles smacking Darcy’s arm with surprising strength. “I told you about Thor!”

“Oh, sure, _you_ did, but a lady never-- stop hitting me Janey,” Darcy swatted at her hands, feeling a giddy kind of happiness bubbling up into her head. “I would like it to go on the record, however, that I surrendered the information under extreme distress.”

“The court reporter will make note of it.” Jane promised, circling her fork with the air of a fairy casting a spell. “Not that we didn’t all know it was coming.”

At Darcy’s raised eyebrows, Jane rolled her eyes. “We’ve been watching the three of you like… like that gif of Michael Jackson eating popcorn.”

“Aw, you used the right meme!” Darcy pinched her friend’s cheek condescendingly, grinning. “I know.  I was honestly expecting a bit more harassment today.”

“They’ll get to it.” Jane didn’t seem to care that her face was under attack as she shoved an over-large bite into her mouth. “Tony can’t wait to buy you all something embarrassing.”

Darcy stated to wince, then reconsidered.  Those kind of things _were_ pretty expensive, and if her reading had been anything to go by, were the sort of thing that Bucky would probably be interest in.

The silence had gone on for too long. “...Oookay.  Moving on from that…” Jane muttered, looking both uncomfortable and interested in equal measure.

“You brought it up,” Darcy pointed out, face hot but smile intact. “I tried to stop it.  I tried to remind you that I was a delicate flower, too refined to speak of such vulgar things.”

“Fine,” Jane conceded, starting to yawn a little without coffee. “But if anything he gets you is good, put it on my Amazon wishlist.”

“What make you think I have your Amazon password?” Darcy asked with false innocence, scraping the last of the frosting from her plate.  Natasha, unsurprisingly, made a hell of a cake.  She thought the frosting probably had mascarpone cheese in it, as smooth as it was.

“You have all my passwords.” Jane replied, utterly unbothered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this the end? Probably not, but it IS a good stopping point for now. I'm sure that there will be plenty of other occasions for Thor's benevolent interference in the future.


End file.
